Up 224 points earlier in the week, the FTSE 100 index fell heavily yesterday for the second day in a row yesterday to close down 106.6 at 5,061.0.

But over a week which has seen British manufacturing orders at a five-year low and a big US hedge fund on the verge of collapse, Britain's premier index closed up five points.

"If you'd been away you would think that nothing had happened but if you have been at the dealing desk you feel like you've been mugged 10 times in the past few days," said one experienced sales specialist.

In a sense yesterday was almost over before it had begun.

The worries about Long-Term Capital Management and its ramifications for global markets saw the Footsie marked down more than 100 points in the first minutes of trading.

And a big fall in Glaxo Wellcome after a downgrade by Goldman Sachs took another 30 points off the index.

But after that the index hung fire with dealers reporting selected buying of cheap stocks rather than a welter of selling.

Footsie never managed to recover to the same extent as the main Continental bourses and failed to respond to renewed resilience on Wall Street.

And it failed to gain support from the firm gilts market. But it held the 5,000 support level comfortably.

The second-line indices, which had been unaffected by the hedge fund worries on Thursday, were hit yesterday. FTSE 250 fell 51.4 to 4,528.9 and the SmallCap dropped 21.3 to 2,011.5.

Strategists said this week's overall flat performance was likely to continue at least for the early part of next week as the market waits for two significant hurdles to be overcome. First, the US Federal Reserve's open market committee meeting on Tuesday is widely forecast to usher in a rate cut.

Second, the third quarter ends on Wednesday and institutions are expected to sit on their hands until the new quarter when they will be able take a view after the latest round of corporate figures.