London FTSE 100 briefly tops 5,000 points

In its first excursion above 5,000 mark since 2002, the FTSE 100 share index briefly passed the barrier by 1.5 points during this afternoon's trading.

This is the first time the troubled stock exchange market has rallied above the 5,000 mark since June 6, 2002.

There has been a recent run on shares on Wall Street, a manufacturing upturn, lower oil prices and a strong profits showing by top firms have served to raise investor confidence in shares.

However, the stock market remains a long way from the heady technology fuelled hype of 6,950 heights visited just prior to the infamous collapse of the dot.com bubble in 1999 with shares eventually plunging to below 3,300 in 2003. Though, some analysts confidently expect that the London share market will eventually return to above 5,500 points, possibly by the middle of the year.

Today though Wall Street losses again threatened to pull share prices lower. Overall, Amsterdam share prices closed lower than some had forecast, even with some poor figures returned by a few traded Dutch companies.

(SP)