A modest decline in the FTSE 100 index gave a rather misleading snapshot of overall sentiment in London's equity market yesterday. At the close of trading the FTSE 100 was down 19.5 at 6,493.6, having been down 49.5 at its worst.

But while the front-line stocks spent much of the day in negative territory, reflecting pockets of profit-taking, the market's second and third-ranking companies turned in a much more positive performance.

The FTSE 250 settled 45.1 ahead at 5,637.5, after touching a session high of 5,639.4 and the FTSE SmallCap ended at a session high of 2,443.9, up 15.3.

Although finishing in the red, the FTSE 100 rallied sufficiently in the early afternoon to hit a new intra-day peak of 6,539.9, only to fall later.

There were some exceptional individual performances, notably from ICI, which climbed more than 12 per cent at one point as speculators bet on the group announcing the sale of its bulk chemicals businesses in the next few days.

Turnover picked up strongly, eventually reaching 1.2 billion shares by 6 p.m.