The bullish news from the US in the form of a big joint venture between IBM and Dell Computer rescued London's stock market from another day of depression. The earlier woes in the market were mostly caused by persistent worries about the direction of US interest rates and next Tuesday's British Budget.

Apart from a 0.4 gain on Tuesday, and yesterday's late surge, the front-line stocks have been under constant selling pressure since the FTSE 100 index hit its all-time intra-day and closing peaks last Wednesday week.

Before the IBM/Dell news was known, the London market had made extremely hard work of making progress. It tried to go better at the start of the session, on the back of a surprise special dividend from Royal & Sun Alliance and a power-packed showing by BP Amoco and Shell.

At the close of a topsy-turvy session, the FTSE 100 index was left with a 53.1 gain at 6,101.4, having reached a session high of 6,117.9 as Wall Street moved into overdrive.

Turnover in equities gathered momentum, reaching 1.14 billion shares at the 6 p.m. cut-off point. FTSE 100 stocks again accounted for the lion's share of business, with 597.4 million shares changing hands.