It's been a turbulent day's trading for the FTSE100 as investors juggled between buoyant trading from miners and drugmaking companies and downbeat telecommunication and retail sectors.
In the end, the index settled down by 0.16% or 8.8 points at 5411.9.
The banking sector was also at the forefront of fallers as their earnings dominated sentiment, although HBOS escaped the general banking decline. The UK's biggest home lender was the latest to deliver its results today, following Lloyds TSB on Wednesday.
HBOS saw another big knock to profits, but the results came in as expected. Shares in the bank have already taken a beating in anticipation of the results. Today, however, they were the leading performer, jumping 7.1% to 290.5p.
But most of the sector was dogged by uncertainty, with Lloyds TSB shedding 10.7p to 295.25p. Standard Chartered and HSBC saw 2p and 8p knocked off their shares respectively.
The retail and foods sector also continued to struggle following soft economic data and poor results from companies such as Next on Tuesday.
Next maintained its place on the list of losers, suffering a 41p drop to 952.5p, while Associated British Foods, which owns Primark and Cadbury also fell.
In a possible reflection of the weakening housing market, Topps Tiles also took a tumble. Shares fell 1.5% to 47.75p after the tile and flooring retailer said its like-for-like sales were down 7.7% in the latest quarter due to tough trading conditions.
Wall Street also had a downbeat day of trading after poor US growth figures. Shortly after London trading closed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.23% at 11441.37.
