Phoney war prevails ahead of rate calls

There remained something of a phoney war feeling on the London stock market yesterday as most of the big institutions preferred to hold back until the crucial decisions on the direction of British and euro-zone interest rates are made known tomorrow. "At the moment the market is reacting to shadow boxing, all posing and no real action or pain," said one market-maker.

Although the FTSE 100 remained in negative territory throughout the session, the market's junior indices, the FTSE 250 and the SmallCap, were never really threatened. The sluggish performance of the 100 index was caused by the two largest stocks, measured by market capitalisation, BP Amoco and Vodafone AirTouch. Both remained under pressure throughout the day and eventually accounted for all of the closing fall in the index. Footsie settled 32.0 lower at 6,252.0, having hit a session low of 6,231.0 shortly after the opening.

Turnover at 6 p.m. was a highly respectable 1.19 billion shares.