A late surge in the last few minutes of trading has seen a healthy finish to the day after a somewhat lacklustre session.
The FTSE seemed to spend most of the day languishing slightly in the red with little in the way of significant corporate news giving any direction. The return of trading in Wall Street after the Thanksgiving holiday seemed to perk the UK up with a strong start propelling the FTSE 100 back towards 4300.
With the markets ending the week on their highs and some of the stomach churning volatility taking a back seat in recent days, many investors will be hoping for a return to more normal times and maybe some sort of continued half-decent recovery. The fly in the ointment for this rosy outlook is of course the cold hard fact that it is only a week since the broader US market briefly slipped back to levels not seen since 1997 – hardly a sign of health. For now though momentum remains upbeat – so while it looks unlikely that the bear has left us just yet, investors go into the weekend with the recent recovery intact and with the possibility of distinct, albeit modest, gains in prospect for the start of next week at least.
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