London's equity market continued to suffer from the lingering after-effects of Wednesday's surprise 25 basis points increase in domestic interest rates imposed by the Bank of England's monetary policy committee. It was a day of thin and nondescript trading, which was not helped by a stuttering opening performance by Wall Street. At the end of the session, the effects of a strong rally in BP Amoco and Shell, which carry heavy weightings in the FTSE 100 index, helped to push the index up.

Dealers said trading was disappointing and one expected the global market to be increasingly uneasy and volatile coming up to the meeting of the US Federal Reserve's open market committee on October 5th. Today's US news expected economic on producer price data, will be scrutinised for signs of emerging inflationary pressures.