The UK stock market ended the Christmas week with another gain, its fourth in succession, although trading was once again fairly quiet.

A spate of US economic data gave a fairly positive picture with consumer confidence, new home sales, weekly jobless claims and durable goods orders all better than expected. Only the Chicago Purchasing Managers' Index was disappointing.

Wall Street followed up Thursday's gains with another positive opening, with the Nasdaq Composite bouncing above 2,000 in early trading. That helped the FTSE 100 index reach its high for the day of 5,243.7, up 30.5, in mid-afternoon. Even though Wall Street shed some of its gains, Footsie held up well, closing 24.2 points higher at 5,237.4. All the other indices were higher with the FTSE 250 up 39.4 at 5,913.7, the SmallCap up 4.8 at 2,569.3 and the Techmark 100 13.13 at 1,467.55.

Turnover was extremely modest with just 598.1 million shares traded by the 6 p.m. count.

Indications that the Christmas period had been highly positive for the retail sector were confirmed by statements from Asda and John Lewis.

Among the general retailers, Next gained 9p to 894p, Kingfisher 7p to 393p, Arcadia 7p to 262p and JJB Sports 111/2p to 4611/2p.

But food retailers lost ground, with J Sainsbury dropping 91/4p to 3621/4p, the worst performance in the FTSE 100, and Tesco easing to 2471/2p.

OPEC's decision to cut oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day in an attempt to bolster the crude price had only a modest effect on the oil giants. And the positive news of the cut was offset by a statement from OPEC President Chakib Khelil that the cartel would be happy to keep the crude price above $20 a barrel. That compares with OPEC's official $22-$28 target range. Shares in BP rose 4p to 537p while Shell advanced 43/4p to 482p. But there was a more positive reaction in the exploration sector, where profits are highly geared to the crude price. Edinburgh Oil & Gas jumped 9p to 1211/2p while Enterprise Oil advanced 13p to 461p.

The best performers in the FTSE 100 were the two utilities, Severn Trent, up 33p at 717p, and Scottish Power, up 13p at 391p.