Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The Index closed out the first week of the year on 6660, up 1.8 per cent from before the Christmas break. Over the same period the FTSE 100 fell back over 65 points to 6194.

The Index’s strong technology contingent enjoyed a strong festive period, as evidenced by a two per cent rise in the TechMARK.

As has often been the case thus far, the largest moves were made by some of the smaller companies: Big stories for the companies involved but less so from the point of view of the Index and the bigger picture.

Pursuit Dynamics recovered 44 per cent to 132p on news that it would be cash positive by year-end and rumours of a significant contract; Sareum rose 32 per cent following an announcement that a respected private investor was taking a 10 per cent stake and finally, Amino bounced back 28 per cent from an oversold position.

Bango was the worst performer, continuing its recent slide with a fall of 21 per cent. However, the main impacts on the Index were made by the larger capitalisation stocks with Travis Perkins and easyJet together contributing 0.6 per cent, or one third of the rise.

Other significant lifts were supplied by Rightmove, Computacenter, Autonomy and Domino but these were cancelled out by weakness in Dixons, Premier Food and Cambridge Silicon Radio, which can count its honeymoon period as well and truly over.