Market report: Wednesday close

SHARE prices around the world were on the slide again sending investors scurrying for cover. Further gloomy news from US technology companies overnight prompted the selling which started in the Far East this morning with Tokyo's Nikkei 225 tumbling 3.4%, its biggest fall of the year.

This had a knock-on effect in London where share prices were again depressed and continued later on Wall Street where the Dow suffered opening falls.

Overnight, after the official close of business in New York, giant computer maker Apple and rival AMD issued profit warnings. They had been preceded by brokers' profit downgradings of rival computer maker IBM, while Oracle Corp's share price was hit after the company warned of a big slump in software sales.

It was just the news stock market bears had been waiting for and provided further evidence that Monday's rally in London and New York was more of a dead cat bounce than the start of sustained recovery. The FTSE 100 index fell 49.6 to 4652.4 in thin trading. It seems the World Cup and Ascot are providing worthy diversions for hard-pressed punters who have seen the value of their portfolios badly eroded in recent weeks.

Tech stocks bore the brunt with the techMARK 100 slumping to yet another new low, with a fall of 17.32 to 879.8. Biggest casualties included Arm Holdings, down 8 1/4p at 145 1/4p, Cable & Wireless, off 6p to 173p, Electrocomponents, dipping 25p to 373 1/2p and Logica, 6 1/2p worse at 199 1/2p.

Banks came under further pressure but Alliance & Leicester rose 23p to 817p after broker UBS Warburg moved from 'hold' to 'buy' on the shares and repeated its 880p target price. A&L recently said the mortgage business was booming and that it was confident of achieving its year-end revenue target of 4% growth.

Abbey National fell a further 5 1/2p to 783 1/2p after US securities house Goldman Sachs lowering its target price from 1100p to 950p. It has also slashed its earnings forecast for 2002 by 17.4% to 69.9p and that for 2003 by 8.2% to 86.4p. It follows hard on the heels of Abbey's recent profits warning.

Mobile phone operator mmO2 lost 3/4p to 37 3/4p after the company gave some idea of the cost of using its new generation of 3G handsets. It hopes to generate a stream of revenue growth from 3G. It certainly needs to. It paid dearly for its licence along with the other mobile phone operators. Broker ABN Amro says mmO2 is vulnerable to takeover and that the shares are a trading buy up to 52p.

The air controllers' strike across Europe hit easyJet, down 35p at 355p, while British Airways fell 3 3/4p to 197 1/2p and Ryanair shed 27p to 398p.

Banking computer software specialist Misys retreated 1/2p to 232 1/2p after its latest trading update. The group has picked up several big orders in recent months and trading since January had been in line with expectations.

Biotech specialist Alizyme firmed 2 1/2p to 57p after being given the go-ahead to move to the latest trials of its anti-obesity treatment ATL-962. The drug is designed to cause weight loss by blocking the digestion and absorption of fat.

Prices and indices in this section are supplied from various sources and calculated at different times and may not always match those listed on the site.

Geoff Foster of the Daily Mail on yesterday's trade
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