A last-GASP flurry of selling pressure, prompted by a lacklustre showing on Wall Street, yesterday drove London's equity market into negative territory in the final few minutes of one of the quietest trading sessions since early April.
The FTSE 100 settled a net 12.9 lower at 6,430.9, its fourth consecutive decline, having reached a day's best of 6,479.8, up 36.0, during the first hour of trading.
It was a similar pattern for the FTSE 250, which ended 0.2 easier at 6,495.2. The Techmark 100, affected by the decline in the Nasdaq, closed 44.24 lower at 3,437.80, a session low, but the FTSE SmallCap managed a 7.9 improvement at 3,307.9.
Apart from a handful of special situations, most notably the market debut of Egg, the Prudential's Internet banking subsidiary, it was generally a low-key session, which saw volume only just creep over the 1 billion shares mark to the lowest daily level since early May. "Turnover was poor and the main talking point in the market was the England/Portugal football match at Euro 2000," said a salesman at one of the big European broking houses.
He said the closure of a number of European markets was also an inhibiting factor.
And it was a typical Monday, with the institutions holding off from the market, as they have done for some time.
There was a flurry of excitement at the start of the day, when conditional dealings commenced in Egg, whose shares, priced at 160p, made rapid early progress before dipping off. Nevertheless, the flotation was being described as a success.
Once again, it was the market's super-stocks, the Vodafone AirTouch-led telecoms and the oil majors, that dominated attention and pulled the FTSE 100 in both directions.
Vodafone AirTouch reversed Friday's poor showing, which had been triggered by worries about a big placing of shares following its victory over BT in the battle for control of Airtel, Spain's second-largest mobile phone group. The rise in Vodafone shares accounted for all of the rise in the 100 index for the larger part of the day.
