A long and at times gruelling week in London's stock market ended on a dull note, with turnover suffering from the effects of global holidays.
Most European stock markets were closed on Thursday for Ascension Day and with many traders and fund managers taking an additional day off, the order flow into London was at a low ebb all day.
London was under light selling pressure from the outset, with the market reacting nervously to the comments made overnight by Mr Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, to the Economic Club of New York. He said there remained a risk of further weakening in the US economy although he added that the five cuts in US interest rates so far this year should provide substantial support.
As ever, the market was undecided about its interpretation of those remarks, although the global economics team at ING Barings said: "Greenspan's speech made it clear that further interest rate cuts are in the pipeline. He suggested that economic growth remains `subpar' and stressed downside risks to growth and played down the risk of inflation."
Adding to the market's unease about the US economy was news that first-quarter US gross domestic product had been revised down to 1.3 per cent, from a preliminary estimate of 2 per cent.
Meanwhile, the day's domestic economic news had little impact on market sentiment with the second revision of first-quarter gross domestic product bringing an upward shift from 0.3 per cent to 0.4 per cent.
At the finish of the session, the FTSE 100 was down 26.1 at 5,889.8, having fallen 56.1 to 5,859.8 at its worst of the day, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was almost 100 points lower. The Nasdaq Composite was easier but not as weak as the Dow.
It was the same story for most of the other main London indices. The FTSE 250 settled 23.8 off at 6,612.0 and the Techmark 100 was 7.54 easier at 2,108.85. But the FTSE SmallCap put up a sturdy resistance to the weakness of the leaders, eventually closing the day 0.9 up at 3,147.5.
Turnover in equities was 1.65 billion shares, with 372 million coming from Vodafone and BT issues.
