War and Wall St drive plucky Footsie lower

The British equity market had a mountain to climb yesterday, with Europe on a war footing, Pacific basin markets gurgling down a plug hole and Wall Street off more than 200 points. The FTSE 100 index was off more than 90 points and below 6,000 after the first hour of trading.

In fact, the prospect of Nato's first attack on a sovereign state in its 50-year history was more of a talking point than a genuine reason to mark the indices lower. European strategists said that while some of the markets closer to Kosovo were sold lower, and Germany was off 2 per cent in early trading, Wall Street remained the dominant feature.

Nevertheless, Footsie resisted the global pressure as best it could. It fought back from the lows throughout the day and closed 43.8 lower at 6,016.7. The blue-chip index tends to be sold more heavily than second-line stocks when there is heavy global pressure, but remained more or less in line with them yesterday. The FTSE 250 fell 40.1 to 5,435.5 while the SmallCap lost 13.1 at 2,382.0.

Today the Confederation of British Industry will provide a pointer with the latest industrial trends survey. The surveys have become slightly more optimistic over the past few months but the bias is expected to remain pessimistic. Turnover by 6 p.m. hit 1.25 billion shares with the balance back in favour of Footsie stocks.