There was no holding back London's equity market yesterday as the recent mood of cautious optimism gathered substantial momentum and drove all the main FTSE indices sharply higher.
The blue-chip index, the FTSE 100, overcame a nervous opening dogged by a steep decline in BSkyB shares and moved well clear of 6,600, the top of a long-running trading range.
Footsie finished the session 57.6 higher at 6,672.7, its second consecutive close above 6,600. Many observers now expect the index to take a dash towards the 7,000 level.
Meanwhile, the FTSE 250 index galloped ahead to hit another record, and the FTSE SmallCap raced to within spitting distance of passing its previous peak.
But the best performance of the lot came from the resurgent Techmark 100, which followed up Wednesday's 3.7 per cent gain with a 4.1 per cent advance, fuelled by another overwhelmingly bullish performance by a rejuvenated TMT grouping. The index soared 162.5 to 4,119.75, its best level since May this year.
The 250 shot up another 58.5 to a record intra-day and closing high of 7,057.8, for a three-day gain of 135.1, or just short of 2 per cent, also boosted by some steep rises among its TMT constituents. Not to be outdone by the 100 and 250, the SmallCap gained 41.4 to 3,557.9, only 7.8 away from its peak, 3,565.7, attained on March 10 this year.
Once again, the benign inflationary outlook in the UK and the US was said to be the main driving force for the market. News that the European Central Bank had upped interest rates by 25 basis points came as no great surprise although some observers had been calling for the ECB to push rates up by 50 basis points.
A near 200-point leap in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, after a decline in the Chicago purchasing managers' index, added to the overall optimism.
Turnover levels expanded rapidly, reaching 2.4 billion shares by the 6 p.m. cut-off point, the heaviest single day's trading since mid-March.
That figure included massive trades in Vodafone, which accounted for 292 million shares, BSkyB, 138 million shares and Rentokil, 132 million shares.
BSkyB's activity came after Kirch, the German group, had sold its remaining 58 million shares via Goldman Sachs and CSFB and as Rentokil bought in another big lump of its own shares.
