US interest rates have dominated the thoughts of British equity investors but the latest comments from the chairman of the Federal Reserve failed to shed much light. Alan Greenspan stood up yesterday afternoon to give an address that one economist had described as being "as widely anticipated as the new Star Wars movie".

But when he sat down the US stock market did nothing. And its British rival did even less. The Footsie had been up and then down beforehand. It ended more or less in between. Although the final tally for the 100 index was a net loss of 11.3 to 6,493.6 there was no real sense of decline. And the second-line indices were stronger. Equities started the day strongly in response to a near 190-point rally on Wall Street the previous evening. They also reacted to the collapse of the merger talks between Alliance & Leicester and Bank of Ireland, and the prospect of the discussions being replaced by a cash bid within the sector.

Then, half an hour after the Footsie opened the Office for National Statistics released retail sales figures which showed that activity in the high street was far stronger than anyone had expected. The data pointed to sales in May being up by one per cent against forecasts of 0.6 per cent. And the weak figure for April was also revised upwards.