After 5 years of firstly a bear market and now a bull market, which has seen the FTSE 100 lose and now regain nearly half its value, the index has returned above the 6000 mark...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4815954.stm

Should hopefully renew confidence in the British economy. :)

Its only gone up because half the FTSE including the LSE itself are up for sale.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of UK plc.

Should hopefully renew confidence in the British economy. :)

The FTSE100 increasingly bears little relation to the domestic UK economy. The biggest companies such as BP, Shell, Vodafone, HSBC, RBOS etc only do a small portion of their business in the UK and others in the index such as Xstrata, Kazakhmys and Antofagasta have nothing to do with the UK whatsoever except for their London listing.

Its only gone up because half the FTSE including the LSE itself are up for sale.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of UK plc.

actually, it is a good endorsement because it shows how we are an open market and worth investing in. Economies where no-one is being purchased shows little confidence in the capacity to generate revenue from that market or shows that they are protectionist and will be harbouring problems that will manifest themselves at some point in the future.

a better measure would be looking at the companies that are coming in to replace those that get bought out - without a steady stream of uk based companies filling the void left by those that have been purchased then we have problems.

Isn't it so high because there have been so many takeovers of British companies or mergers recently driving up share prices?

Not exactly, becasue the ones that have been taken over aren't on the stock exchange anymore.