HARASSED marketmakers were glad to see the back of a week that saw the British equity market being pulled in opposite directions.
Yesterday saw London stock prices hit extremely hard in the wake of the big sell off on Wall Street late on Thursday, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a 57 point gain transformed into a 94 point loss.
There was further pain for London and other European markets as Wall Street started sharply lower again yesterday, dipping a further 75 points not long after the opening.
Adding to the London market's discomfort yesterday was a shock profits warning from Sainsbury, the UK's second biggest food retailer.
The company's warning that full year profits would come ink about 15 per cent below analysts' current forecasts saw Sainsbury shares slide over 13 per cent.
Yesterday's retreat capped an extremely erratic week for stocks. Early on, share prices fell after Mr Eddie George, the governor of the" Bank of England, repeated his call for a rise in British interest rates and as traders braced themselves for the speech to the US Senate budget committee by Mr Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman.
Turnover at 6 p.m. was 795.5 million shares. The value of customer business on Thursday fell to £892.2 million sterling, the lowest daily figure since January 7th.
