It was a distinctly better day for London's benchmark index, the FTSE 100, and the recently battered Techmark 100, as the optimists looked forward to some much-needed good news on interest rates in the US.
But while those two indices made strong progress it was a much less impressive performance from the junior indices, where the FTSE 250 ended a difficult session a shade lower, having never looked comfortable. And the FTSE SmallCap struggled all day before edging up towards the close to finish with a marginal gain.
Although welcoming the Footsie's rally, which followed an extremely bumpy ride over the past week, many dealers warned that a lot depended on the US Federal Reserve.
Wall Street performed well on Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average taking a dash at the 10,000 level and only just failing, but nevertheless posting a 135 points gain at the close. Even more impressive was the performance of the Nasdaq Composite which put on 60 points.
London kicked off in good heart and gradually built on that solid start, helped on its way by a reasonably comfortable opening by Wall Street, where the Dow picked up after a sticky start.
As London closed yesterday the Dow had recaptured the 10,000 level and was up around 40 points while the Nasdaq posted a modest double-figure rise. US data on the trade balance and department store sales had little impact on sentiment.
The FTSE 100, which hit a two-year, intra-day low of 5,471.1 only a week ago, powered back through the 5,600 level to finish the day a net 95.2 higher at 5,646.8, its best of the day.
The FTSE 250 ended a miserable session showing a 0.5 decline at 6,218.9, burdened by grim performances from Capital Radio, Independent Insurance and Pilkington, while the FTSE SmallCap was finally 4.0 up at 2,979.9.
The Techmark 100, which has been hitting record lows on a daily basis in recent sessions, rallied 30.85 to 2,049.30.
Turnover in equities was a respectable 1.9 billion shares, and was said to have been boosted by programme trade activity, involving switches out of "old economy" areas and into the "new economy" stocks.
