London's stock market ended a generally positive week on a slightly firmer note yesterday with all the main indices bar the FTSE 250 making further progress ahead of the long bank holiday weekend.
Small gains across the board continue to reflect a general mood of cautious optimism about equities as the holiday season draws to a close and activity shows signs of picking up after the summer sojourn.
Behind the market's gradually improving confidence has been good news on interest rates in the UK and the US, where the Bank of England's monetary policy committee and the US Federal Reserve's open market committee (FOMC) both left rates on hold after their respective meetings.
Yesterday the omens for the market were mostly positive. Wall Street performed well overnight; the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 38 points and the Nasdaq continued its recent good performance, climbing 42 points. And there was little domestic economic news with the capacity to upset markets.
The FTSE 100 index made a bright start to the session, pushing back above the 6,600 level and hitting a day's best of 6,619.1 in early trading, before gradually running out of steam.
It settled a net 6.7 firmer at 6,563.7, having fallen to a low of 6,538.3, down 18.7 at its worst. Dealers said there was no single dominant factor behind the market's lack of enthusiasm during the afternoon.
The other FTSE indices were mostly in good form, with the notable exception of the 250 index, which was buffeted by some hefty losses in a number of its constituents and which ended the day 9.8 off at 6,922.7. Earlier it fell to 6,907.7.
Among the problem stocks affecting the 250 were Pace Micro, down 11 per cent on competition worries. The FTSE SmallCap, on the other hand, extended its winning run to a remarkable 13th straight session, moving up another 12.4 to 3,491.2. And the Techmark 100 gained 49.31 to 3,735.39.
Telecom stocks, led by Vodafone and BT, were mostly responsible for the latest uptick in the Techmark 100 as well as the FTSE 100 as investors chased the stocks, believing recent declines had been overdone.
Oil shares eased back again, as the market became increasingly concerned about the persistence of oil prices above $30 a barrel.
Turnover in equities reached a reasonably respectable 1.43 billion shares, although that number was inflated by turnover of more than 300m shares in Vodafone.
