Equity activity yesterday was muffled by the sound of hammering and fluttering as strategists busily nailed their colours on interest rates to the mast. And it was drowned out by the general clamour of mergers and acquisitions both real and longed for.
The FTSE 100 index ended a net 50.5 higher at 6,412.0 although the final tally had little to do with events on the day and more to do with general optimism.
There was detail of the terms of British Steel's merger with Hoogovens of the Netherlands and news that Williams had received an approach from Tyco International, the US security group.
Then, there were the rumours. Deutsche Telekom was said to be ready to spend £6 billion sterling (€9.35 billion) on buying Energis following the collapse of its talks with Telecom Italia. Royal Dutch was mooted to be rehashing an offer for BG. And Glaxo Wellcome was said to be dusting down a deal with SmithKline Beecham, which was also thought be be chatting to Novartis - possibly.
Much of the speculation had a touch of the dramatic but the scale of recent activity has left strategists wary about dismissing the rumours too soon.
"Most of these stories you are hearing now are pretty near the truth," said the head of sales at one broker.
That rumour-driven energy was helped by the performance of US equities on Friday and position-taking ahead of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, which meets tomorrow and Thursday.
Opinion on how the committee will vote is very finely balanced, with some surveys arguing for a slight bias in favour of a quarter-point cut, which would take the rate down to 5 per cent.
Sterling is seen as the key. Mr John Shepperd at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson says: "The MPC is likely to cut interest rates by a further 25 basis points as sterling's resilience on the foreign exchanges holds down inflation."
Nevertheless, it is anybody's game and the thin and flat Monday trading reflected the uncertainty.
It was always plausible that the UK market would head higher to begin with. On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had grappled with the nuances buried in the latest US employment figures and won. Up 130 points on the session, it had set a tone which was followed by strong performances in the Japanese and Hong Kong markets.
On the other hand, NATO's failure to secure a ceasefire in Kosovo weighed down many of the continental European markets initially and the decisive factor in the UK was the underlying corporate activity.
That activity helped at all levels. The FTSE 250 index gained 30.6 to 5.771.5 and the SmallCap rose 11.9 to 2,572.7. The FTSE All-Share index was up 21.8 at 2,970.49.
