Worries about the potential for interest rate rises in the US and Britain continued to plague London's leading stocks yesterday. But the discomfort being displayed by the frontline stocks, especially in the heavily-weighted banking, telecom and oil sectors, once again did not run through to the market's second and third ranking arenas.

On the contrary, the FTSE 250 index maintained its progress, pushing up again and getting to within eight points of its closing record, 6,089.9, as buyers continued to chase high technology, engineering and building stocks. However, unable to ignore the downside pressure exerted on the market by another steep fall by Wall Street, the FTSE 250 could only manage a 4.0 closing gain at 6,069.0. More impressive, however, was the FTSE SmallCap, which extended its sequence of consecutive gains to a 14th session, once again hitting record closing and intra-day highs as it did so.