A PROMISING start to the day by equities was demolished during the early afternoon by another slide by Wall Street, which threatened to register its second 100 point fall on the Dow Jones Industrial Average in six days.
Wall Street's retreat was prompted by a profits warning issued by Hewlett-Packard, the US computer group, whose shares fell sharply at the opening, dragging down other high technology stocks.
Shares had quietly repaired the damage inflicted by last Friday's 114 point slide in the Dow and at one stage, very early in the session, looked liked providing the ammunition to take Footsie close to the 3,800 level.
Ahead of a respectable June inflation report, Footsie kicked off in good heart and posted an eleven-point plus rise within thirty minutes of opening.
A minimal rise in inflation during June, giving a year-on-year increase of 2.1 per cent, was seen as doing little harm to the chances of a further reduction in British interest rates before the end of the year.
The gilts market gave some early cause for concern, with the 10-year issue slipping back four ticks, be fore rallying to eventually close seven ticks higher.
London's overall lack of enthusiasm in the face of the Dow's slide was illustrated by the low level of turnover in equities. At the 6 p.m. count, turnover was a poor 669.3 million shares, split pretty evenly between Footsie and non-Footsie stocks. Rather surprisingly, the value of genuine customer business on Wednesday was Pounds 2 billion sterling, the highest daily total since June 20th.
