There were few investors or dealers mourning the passing of one of the most nerve-jarring weeks in the stock market for a long time. Although there was a widespread and much-needed rally yesterday, there was another clutch of profit warnings. Thankfully, those warnings did not affect the FTSE 100 but did include a handful of FTSE 250 companies, such as Enodis and Mentmore Abbey.
The FTSE 100 up 123 at a session best of 5,438.0 drifted back in the run-up to and during the post-market auction to close a net 87.5 higher at 5,402.3, reducing the fall on the week to 2.9 per cent.
The FTSE 250 settled 14.1 up at 5,943.8, but was still down 314.4 or 5 per cent on the week, while the SmallCap added 9.8 at 2,869.1, down 125.81 or 4.2 per cent over the five days. The Techmark 100's 72.38 rally to 1,936.98 reduced its decline on the week to 131.95, or 6.4 per cent.
The market's rally was prompted by Wall Street's powerful performance during the last hour of trading on Thursday when the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a 380-points decline reduced to one of 97 points by the close of the trading session. The Nasdaq Composite was even more impressive, moving up to register a 67-point rise.
US markets maintained their momentum, with the Dow chasing up a further 50 points and the Nasdaq up a similar amount during early trading.
Few market operators were willing to bet heavily on yesterday's rally being the start of a sustained recovery. Dealers pointed to the worrying pick-up in US inflation, announced mid-week, and said they expected more bad news in the form of profit warnings from across the Atlantic in the short term.
However, there was growing expectation that the Bank of England's monetary policy committee would cut domestic interest rates after its next meeting scheduled for April 4th and 5th.
Yesterday's FTSE 100 winners' and losers' tables were an almost exact reversal of Thursday's, with the TMT (technology, media and telecom) sectors putting on a strong showing and the old-economy stocks moving in the opposite direction. Turnover in equities was 2.2 billion shares.
