Encouraging news on the Balkans conflict - Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslav president, was reported as having accepted an international peace plan - and a strong opening on Wall Street helped boost London's equity market yesterday, enabling the FTSE 100 index to post its fourth consecutive winning performance.

That extended its rise during the past four days to 149.1 points or 2.4 per cent. And, unlike on recent occasions, the market held on to most of its gains, despite the underlying nervousness about the direction of US interest rates. But there was no really aggressive institutional buying behind the latest rise; turnover failed to reach the 1 billion mark for the second day running, eventually coming out at 896.5 million shares.

Wall Street provided London with some encouragement first thing, with dealers noting the strong rally by the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday, when an early 140-point retreat was reduced to a mere 18 points by the close. And the US market gave solid support later in the day, when the Dow posted an early 70-point gain, after some market-friendly economic news.

Takeover stories, both actual and rumoured, continued to keep the speculators happy, while the day's corporate news was mostly on the positive side.