The bulls were out in force in London's stock market yesterday as the FTSE 100 index posted a seventh straight winning performance and the junior FTSE indices made rapid progress. The FTSE 100 ended the session 104.4 higher at 6,551.4. Dealers insisted that the market's outstanding performance was no simple mark-up, pointing to the continuing high level of genuine institutional business being transacted. Turnover yesterday of 2.1 billion shares was by far the heaviest daily total this year.

Although outpaced in percentage gain terms by Cable and Wireless, BT was widely acknowledged as the star of the trading session, the shares charging ahead to a record high in the wake of excellent interim results. C & W's rise, the best performance in the FTSE 100, came in the wake of buy recommendations from broking houses Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.