A resurgence of support for the TMT and related sectors, plus a sprinkling of gains in some of the more defensive stocks, produced another winning performance by London's equity market.
Happily, those gains spread right across the market and it was the Techmark 100, the classic representative of the TMTs, that outpaced the rest of the main indices. With Wall Street closed for the Thanksgiving Day holiday and open today only for a halfday session activity in London suffered from the absence of any US investment business.
Even so, turnover in the UK was impressively resilient, eventually reaching 1.9billion shares. Although well below recent levels, that number was welcomed by London brokers who insisted that the institutions had returned to the market recently.
"Much of the activity has been concentrated with the big houses, but it should soon spread out," said one dealer.
The market's revival, which has seen the FTSE 100 drive through the previous upside barrier, just below the 5,300 level, is being attributed to hopes of economic recovery next year and a resumption of earnings growth.
The FTSE 100 made a rather tentative start and took some time to get into its stride but never looked remotely threatened on the downside.
The day's domestic economic news caused no problems to sentiment; the smallest possible downward revision of third quarter UK gross domestic product, at its second reading, from plus 0.6 per cent to plus 0.5 per cent, was in line with market expectations.
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank left euro-zone rates on hold. There had been lingering hopes that the ECB might have cut again.
In percentage terms the Techmark 100 was the best of the bunch, up 15.05 at 1,560.76.
Behind the revival of the TMTs was another powerful performance by MMO2, the former Cellnet business, demerged from BT and whose shares surged higher yesterday. They were by far the most active stock in the market, and driven higher by a spate of broker recommendations. The most powerful of those came from Deutsche Bank which included MMO2 in its European Focus List.
