Footsie lacks real conviction until its closing performance

It was not until the last hour or so of the trading session that London's equity market decided to stick to a trend - and even then there was never any real conviction to its closing performance until the very last second.

The after-market auction saw the FTSE 100 drive up to a session high after a day of heavy and conflicting economic data from both sides of the Atlantic. On balance, dealers said, the economic news tended to increase the chances of interest rate reductions both in the UK and the US next week.

An interest rate cut by the European Central Bank could complete a hat trick of reductions. Next week's interest rate setting meetings commence on Tuesday with the US Federal Reserve's open market committee, followed by the Bank of England's monetary policy committee on Wednesday and Thursday and the European Central Bank, also on Thursday.

Apart from the late upward drive, it was an extremely tense trading session, with investors unhappy to chase the market because of the war against terrorism, the anthrax scares, economic uncertainties and the ever-growing list of profit warnings in Europe and the US.

At the close, the FTSE 100 was 31.5 higher at 5,071.2, having recovered from yet another bout of the jitters which saw the index plunge over 51 points and hit a low of 4,988.3 during the first 30 minutes of the trading day. The other front-line indices generally put on more sedate performances.

The FTSE 250 index was a lone casualty among the indices. Sliding 23.1 to 5,341.7, it was hit by weakness in a handful of tech/telecom stocks, notably Dimension Data and Energis, and a long list of building materials and construction stocks.

The latter were demolished by a warning of tough trading issued by Ireland's CRH, the latest survey of UK house prices - published by the Nationwide - and a downgrade of a couple of the top housebuilders.

The UK CIPS survey of manufacturing came in ahead of expectations, but that news was offset by the fall in UK house prices last month and a gloomy monthly survey of distributive trades carried out for the Confederation of British Industry. Turnover in equities was 1.7 billion shares.