December 24, 1985

A picture caption in Business Day yesterday with an article on companies' gift giving misstated the price of a sterling silver necklace sold by Tiffany & Company. It is $1,200.

Two of the bond market's worst enemies - huge Federal budget deficits and the specter of higher inflation -haunted investors for much of this year. But lately their fears have subsided enough so that interest rates could start 1986 at the lowest levels in six years. In the last two months, lower oil prices and the prospect of smaller Federal deficits have led to several episodes of panic buying. So much so that as the year draws to a close, investors had absorbed a record supply of new bond issues, and also pushed bond prices high enough so that the yields on long-term Treasury issues fell into single-digit territory. The rampant optimism of the bond market caught many analysts by surprise. When the Blue Chip Financial Forecast polled nearly 50 economists and financial analysts late last week, it found that the group of experts was, on average, forecasting much lower rates for 1986 than they had only one month earlier.

The holidays reached Wall Street early, causing a sharp decline in volume yesterday. Stock prices also fell sharply. Traders who were present appeared inclined toward selling the stocks they have held during the four-month rally, and this produced one of Wall Street's biggest losses of the month. Larry Wachtel of Prudential-Bache Securities believes part of the selling pressure may have come about because investors anticipate some tax selling later in the week.

At least six whites, three of them children, were killed today when a bomb planted beside a garbage can exploded among pre-Christmas shoppers at a mall in this white resort south of Durban. The Minister of Law and Order, Louis Le Grange, vacationing near this city on the Indian Ocean, said he blamed the outlawed African National Congress for the bomb. He accused its operatives of deliberately hitting what he called soft targets. The attack was the third against whites in South Africa in eight days and seemed to represent an increase in the readiness of the Goverment's foes to offer violent challenge to apartheid. In the nation's crisis, spanning 15 months of violent protest and repression, only a handful of the 1,000 dead have been whites.

In the basement of St. George's Episcopal Church at 11:15 A.M. yesterday, 9-year-old Sky A. Berdahl inspected the neat row of brown lunch bags, poked his nose into a half-empty one, and in his best imitation of a bellow announced, ''We need more sandwiches!'' As Sky explained that he took his role as sandwich inspector seriously - ''I'm going to be a house husband when I grow up'' - his sister, Beau, 5, put the final touches on a Christmas card. Stuffed into a bag, the lunch and card would soon be given to one of the people who were waiting outside on Stuyvesant Square. Among them was 4-year-old Thomas Frazier, who waited impatiently, tugging on his mother's coat. Flashing a smile from underneath his winter hat, Thomas said he had come to the church to get his lunch.