With Wall Street providing the perfect backdrop, both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite powered ahead on Tuesday night and there had to be a hugely persuasive reason to prevent London's equity market from moving ahead yesterday. Sadly, that is exactly what the market had to contend with as a massive placing of Vodafone shares soaked up much of the liquidity available to the market.

And if that wasn't enough, there was a placing of stock in another of the big telecoms groups, Cable & Wireless, just before the close to add to the downside pressure. There was no Wall Street-inspired rescue either, as an early uptick in the Dow was replaced by a 50points-plus decline, although the Nasdaq clung on to a rather modest gain as London closed.

So with the FTSE 100 burdened by the predictable slide in the Vodafone share price, as Goldman Sachs and UBS Warburg beavered away to place the £3 billion sterling worth of Vodafone shares being sold to help fund the purchase of BT assets, the FTSE 100 was always labouring under intense downside pressure.

While disenchanted by the FTSE 100's failure to launch a final drive back through 6,000, having got to within five points of that level recently, dealers were heartened by the resilience of the FTSE 250, SmallCap and Techmark 100, all of which finished strongly.

Dealers said the Vodafone placing added to the dark clouds gathering over the market. The stock overhang in Vodafone, resulting from the company's aggressive expansion policy over the past couple of years, had already brought pressure to bear on the stock price. Some 3.6 billion shares are thought to be available for sale in June as various lock-up agreements, preventing their sale, expire.

Goldman's placing power was demonstrated vividly late in the day as the broker placed 25 million Cable & Wireless at 500p a share within a matter of minutes. Last week Goldman placed 525 million of Billiton shares held by Anglo American. While some observers fretted about the big share placings and the Vodafone overhang, others said the market's ability to absorb such large amounts of stock was "a reflection of its underlying health".

Turnover in equities was 2.71 billion shares, the highest daily total since April 20th.