A SPRINKLING of positive stories in a handful of the FTSE 100 constituents provided the drive for another good day in the London market's leaders and lifted the 100 index for the sixth successive trading session.
A strong start to Wall Street - where the Dow Jones Industrial Average made good progress and posted a 75-point gain an hour after London closed - was another plus for British stocks.
But the gains in the top stocks were not repeated across the rest of British equities, where the second-liners, represented by the FTSE Mid-250 and the smaller capitalised stocks gave ground.
At the close, the FTSE 100 was 17.4 ahead at 4,346.1, extending the rise over the last six sessions to 94.4 or 2.2 per cent. The FTSE Mid-250 on the other hand ended the day 4.9 lower at 4,513,3 and the SmallCap was finally unaltered at 2,295.6.
The stock market's old bugbear, the lack of genuine customer business, remained, however, with turnover again inflated by the continuing big turnover in the newly-floated Alliance & Leicester, which now has banking status. Action in the bank's shares accounted for around 10 per cent of overall market volume. Turnover at 6 p.m. was 668.4 million.
Dealers generally remained unconvinced about the market's ability to hold on to its recent gains, pointing to the probability of a Labour government and an interest rate rise following the general election.
Strategists tended to go along with that view. One said the market was becoming increasingly vulnerable to emerging inflationary pressures, which would show up in official figures within the next three months. Another noted that the big institutions were increasingly building up liquidity, not through selling British stock, but simply by not buying it.
In the background was a market rumour that the Conservatives had picked up strongly in an opinion poll due for release this morning, although dealers insisted that any significant rise in the Tory vote would be seen as increasing the likelihood of a hung parliament.
The latter is viewed by most observers as representing the worst possible outcome of the election as far as the stock market is concerned, with months of uncertainty followed by the possibility of another general election.
Gilts gave no real help to the equity market, finishing marginally easier in front of today's gilts auction of £2 billion of five-year stock.
Bank shares remained very much in vogue with Alliance & Leicester's remarkably buoyant debut on Monday followed by a flurry of profit-taking that saw the shares retreat over 6 per cent. Other banks took up the baton, however, with Barclays responding to an encouraging trading up-date at the a.g.m.
