A strong opening on Wall Street has kept the FTSE 100 buoyant around the 4000-point mark.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up around 300 points in the first half hour of trading in New York, at around 8470.
Here in London the FTSE 100 is now trading up around 140 points on last night's close – just below the 4000 mark.
Earlier it went as high as 4034.02 and has remained in positive territory all day.
The big gainers of the day included some of the insurance groups, taking their lead from Aviva, which reported better than expected figures.
Aviva shares increased by more than 13% to 277.25p, while Old Mutual rose 13% to 48p and car insurance specialist Admiral was up more than 9% at 867.5p.
Standard Chartered continued its strong showing on the back of an overnight rally in the Asian markets.
The Asia-focused bank said today it made good progress in the third quarter of 2008 thanks to strong trade flows between Asian economies.
"It is clear that Asian economic growth is moderating but in general, the economies remain resilient and their economic growth rates remain well above the rates of growth for markets in the west," the bank said in a trading statement.
The troubled high-street bank HBOS is having a good day – up nearly 8% at 65.8p.
Its merger partner, Lloyds TSB, was down slightly at 168.4p, which means the gap between the two companies' values has narrowed.
The Lloyds share price still values HBOS at more than a pound, so there is still plenty of ground to be made up.
Panmure analyst Sandy Chen set a new price target of 125p on HBOS shares and retained a buy recommendation, provided that investors back the Lloyds deal.
Meanwhile Barclays, the bank that unlike its main rivals is eschewing direct government investment, saw shares slip 5% to 181.7p following reports that it was seeking investment from the Russian state-owned banks Sberbank and VTB.
