The last trading session of the third quarter saw the London market's leading index deliver a reasonably encouraging response to what was generally expected from the Danish euro referendum - a narrow No vote.

And in another display of its resilience London refused to buckle under the pressure of a poor opening performance from Wall Street yesterday, which came hard on the heels of a stunning upside performance by US markets on Thursday evening.

"We didn't chase the market too far at the start, after the super showing by the Dow and the Nasdaq overnight, so it made sense not to react too much to the Dow today," said one trader.

He also pointed out that the result of the Danish referendum did not bring anything like the expected downside pressure on the euro - the opposite was the case.

Sterling moved up 1.0 on the Bank of England's Sterling Exchange Rate Index, and weakened against the euro, in what was described as "exactly what the market was looking for", by the same marketmaker.

At the finish of a session featured by a generally disappointing level of genuine investment activity, as the big institutions preferred to move to the sidelines as the curtain came down on the quarter, the FTSE 100 index showed a 30.1 decline at 6,294.2.

Over the session the index swung around, pushing up 61.6 to 6,325.7 during the first 20 minutes of trading, in a knee-jerk reaction to the Danish referendum news and the sparkling US market show, before dipping off just before Wall Street resumed yesterday afternoon.

The other FTSE indices also made progress, but of a much more conservative nature. The 250 index settled 4.2 firmer at 6,676.9, its lowest level of the day, and well away from its session high, 6,694.3, while the SmallCap was finally 7.4 up at 3,416.4. The Techmark 100 delivered a much more settled showing, closing 19.61 up at 3,734.85.

Over the week the 100 index has risen 88.3, or 1.4 per cent, the 250 index 31.8, or 0.5 per cent and the Techmark 100 88.8, or 2.4 per cent.

The lone loser of the main indices was the SmallCap, which has fallen 9.29.

Turnover in equities was a poorish 1.41 billion shares, well down on recent levels but entirely explained, dealers said, by the reluctance of the institutions to disrupt their portfolios at the end of the quarter: "Today's business is mostly from speculators," said one.