Footsie rises again but 6,000 mark still elusive

It was given every opportunity, but London's equity market once again gave a clear demonstration of its reluctance to see its benchmark FTSE 100 index re-visit the 6,000 level it lost on March 8th. Unlike its most recent attempts to run through 6,000 the index came within seven points of that level. Its most recent attempts have tended to run out of steam 20 points short of 6,000.

As one of the senior London derivatives traders said yesterday: "6,000 on the FTSE proves to be elusive as any strength is taken as an opportunity to raise funds by investors for the impending rights and expected placings." But the market extended its sequence of winning performances to a sixth straight session. As another senior market trader said: "It is proving difficult in the short term, but the 100 index will get through 6,000, and when it does it will run on strongly, as long as Wall Street holds."

The best performance, in percentage terms, came from the Techmark 100 index which surged 78.57 to 2,166.86, its best level since March 16th. It was no surprise that the London market's latest advance was fuelled by the new-economy stocks which mostly make up the TMT grouping. The drive behind the TMTs came from Wall Street overnight where the Dow Jones Industrial Average moved up a rather sedate 36 points in early trading, giving it an even bigger comfort zone above the 11,000 level. But the real star performance on Wall Street yesterday was the Nasdaq Composite, which raced up 106 points in early trading, or more than 5 per cent.

London dealers said that reflected the view held by many international institutions that the worst of the downturn in the US economy had already been factored in and that Mr Greenspan's five 50-basispoint cuts in US interest rates may have worked an economic miracle.

TMTs accounted for 15 of the top 20 winners in the FTSE 100, led by Sage Group, whose chief executive encouraged the bulls with optimistic forecasts at Credit Suisse First Boston's technology conference in Barcelona. And the FTSE 100 stocks reporting yesterday, including Marks & Spencer, British Airways and Compass, were all given a positive response by the market.

Turnover in equities was a good 2.2 billion shares.