It was a moot point whether the London market was up or down yesterday.

Superficially, the Footsie and subsidiary indices all showed a positive trend on the day and even had the support of some encouraging economic pointers.

But, once you took out the impact of Vodafone AirTouch, which moves the index by three points for every penny it rises or falls, the Footsie was down.

That underlying weakness confused several dealers who saw nothing but good news.

"This market is bizarre. We had US figures from companies such as Citigroup, Chase, Ford, Coca-Cola and Boeing that beat expectations but the S&P index was down earlier in the day and the Dow Jones fell soon after the opening," said one trader.

The Footsie also ignored positive signals closer to home. The minutes from the meeting last month of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee showed that none of the nine members had voted for an increase in rates.

At the previous meeting, three members had pushed for a rise.

Government bonds were up almost half a point shortly after the announcement but equities never really responded.

Mr John Shepperd, strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, argued that the MPC minutes gave a skewed impression.

"A nine-zero vote was a surprise because people were not expecting the three hawks to back down so quickly. But it was misleading because it was just a technical withdrawal. They are waiting to see what the next set of inflation figures show at the beginning of August."

He added that the latest set of retail sales figures also gave some ammunition to the interest rate hawks. They showed a month-on-month rise of 0.7 per cent and year-on-year gain of 4.5 per cent while they had been expected to be flat.

The market refused to be drawn either way ahead of Mr Alan Greenspan's twice-yearly speech to Congress this evening about the state of the financial and monetary health of the US. Although few economists expect any fireworks, the testimony is a key set piece in the global economic calendar and, if nothing else, gives the market an opportunity to stall.

The FTSE 100 closed 14.9 higher at 6,465, the midcap, 34.5 with support from Vodafone and BP Amoco, the UK's second biggest stock, on hopes that oil output would not be increased. It was offset by nervousness about Freeserve.