The steep fall on Wall Street overnight, lingering worries about South America and the impact on bank earnings of the millennium bug, added to worries about domestic corporate earnings to bear down heavily on London's equity market yesterday. And that pressure extended right across the board, with all the main FTSE indices never remotely looking like finishing in positive territory.

The weakness on Wall Street saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average slide 174 points or 1.6 per cent overnight, with the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite down even more, losing 2.6 per cent.

But a rally in US markets not long after the outset of trading - when the Dow recouped more than 60 points in quick time - alleviated some of the pressure on UK stocks, with the FTSE 100 stabilising and eventually finishing the session a net 72.8 or 1.1 per cent off at 6,249.3.

That was a long way off its worst level, when the index was down 137.3 at 6,184.8, with some of the market's bears talking the index back down below the 6,000 level in the short term.