London's equity market delivered a powerful follow-through to Wall Street's strong recovery, with the FTSE 100 index recouping nearly all of Tuesday's losses as part of a global rally.
The better trend in London had been anticipated by market-makers late on Tuesday as Wall Street was getting into its stride, prior to posting its second biggest-ever points gain on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The Dow finished Tuesday 288 points or 3.8 per cent higher, regaining more than half of Monday's 512-point slide, as some of the intense heat generated by the Russian political and economic crises abated.
What impressed traders in London was the breadth of the recovery in domestic stock prices.
There had been concerns the rally would be confined to the leading stocks, if the second-liners and small-caps suffered a belated wave of selling by private investors unable to move as quickly as the big institutions.
In the event, very little selling of the smaller stocks developed and both the junior indices raced ahead in line with the FTSE 100.
There was additional help for UK stocks from the further decline in sterling, which saw the Bank of England's trade-weighted index ease 0.3 to 105.0, a two-day fall of 1.0.
And rumblings that a cut in UK interest rates in the not-too-distant future is looking more of a possibility gave a push to many consumer stocks, which have been damaged by fears of recession.
Turnover at 6 p.m. was 929.6 million shares, with FTSE 100 stocks accounting for 55 per cent. High-tech stocks, given such a hard time in the market on Tuesday, staged a determined rally.
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