It looked as if London's benchmark equity index would finish its runup to Christmas on a positive note for much of yesterday's truncated trading session.
Another flurry of selling in the telecoms sector, which claims such a heavy weighting in the FTSE 100, put paid to any chances of the index finishing up on the day.
The FTSE 100 dipped back below the 6,100 level, eventually closing 18.0 down at 6,097.5 - For the rest of the indices, however, it was a solid end finish to the week.
Earlier, London had taken its cue from Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average enjoyed an excellent trading session. , pushing up 168 points.
And For a change there was a positive showing from the recently hammered Nasdaq Composite. That just managed to close higher over the session, in spite of the appearance of yet more profit warnings from the tech sector.
The picture shifted substantially for the rest of the market, however, with the FTSE 250 moving up smartly and closing 33 higher at 6,456.1, after reaching a day's best of 6,459.5.
Similarly, the FTSE SmallCap moved up 10.9 to 3,151.3, a fraction off its best of the session.
The Techmark 100 index rounded off a good session for the more junior indices pushing up 22 to 2,521.05.
Over the week the FTSE 250 has outpaced the other indices, moving up 24.7, helped by the emergence of overseas takeover bids for Lasmo, the oil group, and Hepworth, the building materials and heating group.
Dixons, the electrical goods retailer, provided a pleasant surprise in a sector that has had more than its fair share of troubles during the year. Dixons held top place in the Footsie until the last few minutes of trading, in the wake of a positive trading update.
It was not a positive session for Sainsbury, however, as it announced the sale of its Homebase DIY business and its development sites for a combined £969 million (€1.55 billion).
Jeremy Batstone, head of research at NatWest Stockbrokers, said he was reasonably bullish on UK equities for next year.
NatWest's top ten 10 stock recommendations for 2001 are; AB Ports, BAE Systems, Berkeley Group, BG Group, Cobham, GlaxoSmithKline, Marconi, Mitie, Royal Bank of Scotland and Vodafone.
