European Midday Update: London Climbs Higher as Continent Inches Lower

LONDON -- Despite Wednesday's decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve to maintain its tightening bias, London traders decided to take a sanguine approach Thursday.

After a very quiet start, the main market pushed higher, and as midday approached the FTSE 100 was up 47.3 points to 6479.60. Meanwhile, the Techmark 100 struggled to make headway in either direction and was down 12.21 points to 3182.16.

Generally, it was undeniably a quiet day, so some traders started to focus on MSCI's quarterly structural changes to their indices due out Thursday night. They are used by many fund managers to help arrange their portfolios and measure their performance.

Some are speculating that tonight's alterations may have an adverse impact on U.K. telecommunications and health care stocks, as their weighting will be reduced to make way for under represented Spanish telcos and Dutch and Italian pharmaceuticals. ...