The London market maintained the momentum of Thursday's rally yesterday as the news from the US continued to be fairly positive. The FTSE 100 index followed Thursday's 89 point gain with another 55.4 advance to 5,537.0, taking the two day advance to 2.7 per cent.
Wall Street set the tone for the day's trading with strong gains in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite giving Footsie a boost from the open. However, the early progress was interrupted when Epcos, the German mobile chip component manufacturer, issued a profit warning. That sent Footsie into retreat in midmorning carrying the blue chip down to its low of the day at 5,439.6.
The downturn was temporary, however, and Footsie got into its stride during the afternoon as Wall Street managed to hold on to Thursday's gains. US retail sales figures were slightly weaker than expected but that was offset by a rise in consumer confidence.
Vodafone threw its weight behind the rally, chalking up another 4 per cent gain to follow Thursday's rebound. There was, for once, no clear trend in the TMT (technology, media and telecom) stocks. Sage and CMG were among Footsie's top five performers but Logica, COLT, and ARM were the worst.
The overall performance of the market was much weaker than the headline figure for Footsie might indicate. One factor was the presence of no fewer than six profit warnings - from Litho, Optoplast, Premier Direct, Staffware, Topps Tiles and Yorkshire - representing a broad swathe of the corporate sector from software to textiles.
The FTSE 250 index fell 5.1 to 6,163.8 while the SmallCap edged down 0.3 to 2,799.4. The Techmark 100 index of leading technology stocks advanced 15.55 to 1,602.87. Over the week, the FTSE 100 index was up 1.1 per cent, the 250 was 0.4 per cent higher, the SmallCap dropped 0.7 per cent and the Techmark 100 advanced 3.1 per cent.
Equity markets will be watching next week for a spate of economic data, including inflation and average earnings, that will give a clue as to the next move in interest rates.
Turnover was down from Wednesday's and Thursday's levels, with 1.65 billion shares traded by the 6 p.m. count.
