London stock market traders found themselves frozen by a combination of shock and fear that was intensified by the start of the summer holiday season.
The shock was that after falling for seven straight trading sessions, the FTSE jumped on Thursday and Friday to show that there might be some life in equities after all.
Fear reflected the arrival of arguably one of the most information-packed and potentially significant weeks this year.
"I can't stress how big this week is and the market would like to get all the announcements out of the way before it tries to go better," said the head of institutional sales at one broker.
In the US, there are about 1,500 companies reporting quarterly earnings data. Many of them are small but they include Intel, the world's largest chip maker, which could set the tone for the hard-pressed technology sector. Recently the US giant has been making some tentatively confident comments and investors are hoping the remarks will be backed by the latest trading statement.
Also, tomorrow, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan will be giving his twice yearly testimony on the state of the US economy.
On the continent, shareholders were hanging fire ahead of the interest rate meeting of the European Central Bank.
Inflation data today will be followed later in the week by the minutes of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee and the latest retail sales figures.
The upshot of all this expectation was that the FTSE 100, in common with most other continental European bourses, dribbled lower. The index ended the session with a net slide of 19.9 to 5517.1.
However the most noteworthy aspect of the day was not the movement but the lack of underlying activity. Overall, turnover in London failed to reach 1.4 billion shares, one of the quietest days this year as dealers shied away.
That general lack of involvement was symptomatic of a global paralysis. Volume in France, for example was about 50 per cent lower than normal and Tokyo experienced its quietest day's trading this year.
There was little help on the corporate front. BP rose slightly on news of its joint venture with Eon of Germany and a couple of mortgage banks benefited from dusty merger chat. However, the general feel was of a mixed bag of small price adjustments.
Lower down the market life was also fairly quiet. The FTSE 250 fell 8.9 to 6,154.9 and the SmallCap added 3.2 at 2,802, while the Techmark 100 fell 8.63 to 1,594.24.
