The Bank of England's decision not to push interest rates into negative territory dominated the news flow and directed markets on Thursday.
The call was widely expected, but the pound nevertheless skyrocketed on the news and pushed shares in London's top set of companies lower as a result.
The currency had been trading down around 0.4% against the dollar before the midday announcement, which flipped the tables. By the end of the day, sterling was up 0.1% and one pound could buy $1.3662.
It also saw a post-announcement bounce buying 1.1411 euros by the end of the day, a rise of 0.7%.
Currency traders primarily focused on the indication that a move into negative rates is unlikely this year.
The Bank may have told lenders to prepare in case it needs to push rates into negative territory. But its recognition that they would need at least six months to prepare first seems to have buoyed sterling.
"The bank doesn't seem likely to introduce negative rates in the near-term, hence the jump in the pound," said CMC Markets analyst David Madden.
He added: "Andrew Bailey, the BoE boss, doesn't want to rule out the policy but at the same time, it is only if the situation deteriorates, would the bank contemplate such a move."
A rise in sterling often has an opposite effect on the heavily export-dependent FTSE 100, and the index did close down 0.1%, or 4.1 points.
However the FTSE's 6,503.72 close was in fact a little higher than the 6,498 it had been trading at before the Bank's decision was announced at midday.
A look at global markets revealed why as domestic news had clearly put downward pressure on the index when compared to international peers. On the continent, the German Dax and French Cac gained 0.9% and 0.8% respectively, while in New York the S&P 500 had gained 0.7% and the Dow Jones 0.9% by the time Europe went home for the day.
In company matters, the news of a £16 billion loss for Shell in 2020 sent its shares down 2%. BT dropped further though, closing down 3.2% on the news that its revenue had dropped 7% over the last nine months of the year.
Meanwhile shares rallied 4.5% for Compass Group, despite a one third drop in revenue in the last three months of 2020.
And the news that Barratt Developments planned to restart its dividend payments pushed shares up by 2.2%.
Finally a 0.9% share price rise followed the revelation that Watches of Switzerland's revenue increased 5.7% in the three months to January 24, despite lockdown measures.
The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were Lloyds, up 1.93p to 36.11p, Natwest, up 8.6p to 163.85p, Compass, up 60p to 1409.5p, Whitbread, up 126p to 3,120p, and IAG, up 4.9p to 153.7p.
The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 were Unilever, down 269p to 4,067p, Fresnillo, down 34p to 1,000p, BT, down 4.15p to 124.55p, Just Eat Takeaway.com, down 264p to 7,930p, and United Utilities, down 22.6p to 913p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here