It was always going to be difficult for London's equity market to make progress yesterday with investors and fund managers feeling their way very cautiously after the holiday weekend in the UK and the US.
Lacking a pointer from Wall Street on Monday and with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 117 points and the Nasdaq Composite losing 30 points last Friday, the FTSE 100 opened easier and, after a minor blip early on, moved progressively lower before staging a minor rally at the close.
The weakness in the leaders stemmed mostly from another poor day for telecoms stocks, such as Vodafone and BT, which both have heavy weightings in the 100 index.
There was a minor decline in the FTSE 250 and the FTSE SmallCap index although the Techmark 100 was buffeted by the widespread declines in the TMT sectors of the market.
Outside of the front-line stocks, and particularly Vodafone and BT, and to a lesser extent Spirent, there was little pressure on the market, but the 6,000 level is looking a fair distance away. "It will take some good news to propel London towards that number now," said one market-maker.
A stronger-than-expected US consumer confidence reading for May the figure came in at 115.5 compared with a consensus expectation of about 111.0 triggered a strong showing from the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the start of the US session, before running back to see that rise halved as London closed. The Nasdaq Composite had a bad start, however, falling 50 points in early trade in the face of a downgrade of Sun Microsystems and EMC by Goldman Sachs.
At the close, the FTSE 100 was left with a 25.9 loss at 5,863.9, while the 250 eased 6 to 6,606.0, the SmallCap 2.5 to 3,145.0 and the Techmark 100 23.14 to 2,085.71.
A close look at the winners and losers in the main indices showed how big a part the overall weakness in the telecoms, and the rest of the TMT sectors, played in the decline in the FTSE 100.
Vodafone's full-year results, which took some time to unravel, were generally seen as about consensus levels and the chief executive's remarks that the company would not embark on further territorial advancement in the near future were also welcomed. But the super-optimists were not pleased and Vodafone shares drifted back, accounting for almost 20 points of the FTSE 100's eventual decline.
BT was another big casualty with the market giving the thumbs down to the take-out price for Yell, the directories business. And as one telecoms specialist put it, the market is still extremely nervous about the level of take-up of the new shares.
