Worrying news from US causes Footsie to drop

The final session of a short trading week, which included more than the odd shock, saw London's stock market take a break after having made good progress over the three previous sessions.

And while there was no news on the domestic economic front, there were some slightly worrying developments for market watchers hoping for another interest rate reduction in the US after Tuesday's meeting of the Federal Reserve's open market committee.

There, retail sales came in much higher than expected, news that was only partly countered by weak US producer price data. Even more worrying for those looking for a US reduction was news that the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index came in at 92.6, much higher than the expected 88.5.

The US economic news was not being viewed as likely to dissuade the US Federal Reserve's open market committee from embarking on another cut in interest rates which would be the fifth reduction so far this year.

Dealers in London suggested that another 50 basis points cut in US rates might have been enough to propel the Dow Jones Industrial Average back through the 11,000 level for the first time since September last year. "The Dow above 11,000 now goes on the backburner and we will have to wait a bit longer for the Footsie to top 6,000 again," said one market maker.

The 100 index has taken a number of dashes towards 6,000 in recent weeks, the most recent being on Thursday in the wake of the interest rate cuts announced by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank.

The UK reduction was widely expected but investors were pleasantly surprised by the European Central Bank's change of heart after recent comments suggested a cut was not on the agenda. At the close the FTSE 100 was down 62.4 at 5,901.6. The FTSE 250 lost 15.7 to 6,504.9 and the Techmark 100 was down 38.02 to 2,006.66. The SmallCap edged up 2.7 to 3,092.1.

The most intense activity in the market was in the mining sector where Cazenove, acting in an agency capacity, placed two exceptionally large lines of stock in Anglo American and De Beers.

Turnover was 1.7 billion shares.