Euro exchanges open with a whimper

All major exchanges were slightly down, with some investors wanting more radical action from the Fed. The FTSE 100 was down just under one per cent by 09:00 (GMT), the German DAX fell 1.2 per cent, and the French CAC 40 also fell 1.1 per cent.

However, London tech stocks did slightly better, largely holding their value with the TechMARK index down only 0.4 per cent. UK techs were mainly bouyed up by rises for telco Cable and Wireless and south African systems integrator Didata, still confident after good results yesterday.

However, this hid falls for telcos Vodafone and Colt, as well as a 3.6 per cent drop for chipmaker ARM.

Yesterday's rate cut was not a surprise, and US investors seemed to have factored it into their trades before the announcement, leaving US markets flat yesterday.

The Nasdaq closed up just 3 points, or 0.2 per cent, with the mainstream Dow Jones Index showing similarly little action, down less than 0.1 of a per cent.