A weak start on Wall Street meant the FTSE 100 finished the session in London with a small loss.

For much of the day the London market traded in a fairly narrow range, with the blue chip benchmark hitting a high of 5,959.7 and a low of 5,891.9. But there was plenty of trading volume despite that lack of volatility, with 2.27 billion shares traded by the 6 p.m. count. Vodafone had another busy day, trading 581 million.

The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee left rates on hold, as had been widely expected after a string of stronger-than-expected economic data in recent weeks. A rate cut on the day before the election would also have risked political controversy.

Philip Shaw, UK economist at Investec, commented: "Given that the global situation will continue to provide downside risks to UK economic prospects, there is a continued likelihood of a modest easing in monetary policy. We still see rates falling another quarter point to 5 per cent, probably in July."

Footsie's high for the day, a gain of 37.2, was achieved just after the Bank announcement but the index lost ground in the afternoon as both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite opened lower. Hewlett-Packard was the latest technology company to warn that the slowdown in demand had spread well beyond the US.

By the close, Footsie has drifted to 5,901.5, a net loss of 21 points. The other indices were mixed with the FTSE 250 up 6.1 at 6,652.3, the SmallCap 13.1 ahead at 3,139.6 and the Techmark 100 off 3.15 at 2,056.

There was little sign that equity investors had any interest in today's election which the Labour party is expected to win by a wide margin. However, a Labour landslide might prompt speculation that the government would push hard for early entry into the euro.

That would be expected to be bad for sterling but good for manufacturing stocks. The main activity yesterday was at the corporate level where Railtrack continued to suffer as it fell out of the FTSE 100, despite some broker support, and Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel group, was hit by poor figures from Usinor and fears that the US may act to limit steel imports.

Oil stocks, strong in recent days, fell following a jump in US petroleum reserves.

While the FTSE 100 index is still 1,000 points below its peak, Mike Lenhoff, chief portfolio strategist at Gerrard, points out that the UK market ex-TMTs (technology, media and telecoms) reached highs on Monday and Tuesday.