Leaders drift but second liners gain

AN element of anti climax was plainly evident in the British equity market yesterday, with the leaders tending to drift back in spite of another bid in the utilities sector.

But in another demonstration of the market's underlying strength, the second line stocks, which were always well bid during the session, closed at or around their best levels.

Such was the demand for that sector that the FTSE Mid-250 index posted its seventh consecutive record high, finishing the day a net 9.6 up at 4,544.1.

"The market is still full of bid talk, but today the institutions decided to sit back," said one dealer. Others pointed to the absence yesterday of any of the frantic programme trading activity that was one of the features of last week. They said there had been a marked slowdown in the amount of new money being pumped into the market via unit trusts and investment trusts.

The FTSE 100 closed the session 4.4 lower at 3,852.7, after its quietest trading session for some time. Turnover at the 6 p.m. reading was 695.9 million shares, well down on recent levels.

Customer turnover has been running at well above average levels recently, topping the £2 billion sterling mark for the last three days of last week.

The consensus among traders was that London had put up a creditable performance in the face of some determined profit taking.

London even ignored a sharp opening performance by Wall Street where the Dow Jones Industrial Average raced up over 50 points in early trading, before coming off and then making renewed rapid progress after London closed, when the Dow was showing a 32 point gain.

News of slightly higher than expected M4 money supply growth caused little damage to the market during early exchanges which saw the FTSE 100 open around three points lower, in the wake of the disappointing performance by Wall Street on Friday.

After sliding almost 10 points in the first hour of trading, the Footsie began to claw its way back, eventually moving into positive ground shortly after Wall Street opened. But with the volume of business faltering, the market could not maintain its rally, and the index fell back to close with a modest decline on balance.

The utilities areas of the market remained alive with actual and rumoured takeover speculation. Southern Electricity received the expected renewed offer from National Power, itself in receipt of a bid proposal from Southern.