There were few crumbs of comfort for London's equity market yesterday as dealers and the big institutions continued to take evasive action ahead of the meeting of the Federal Reserve's interest-rate setting open market committee. The two-day meeting started yesterday, with the outcome due to be announced at 7.15 p.m. London time today.

Despite a good showing on Wall Street there was no respite for a flagging London market, which finished down 98.6 at 6,307.1 after having just managed to resist dropping back through the 6,300 level. The FTSE 250 fell to 5,851.4, losing 17.8 while the FTSE SmallCap also fell, losing 2.6 to 2,651.2.

Turnover in British equities was 1.16 billion.