Shares ended the session lower on news that Iran has ignored UN demands to halt its nuclear programme. This news is extremely important and today marks the start of a very long road, again!
A bit of a bank holiday weekend feel about the stock market today. A down day across the board again which is not always a bad thing. It is much better for stocks to open and close down some days and then re-bound more slowly, this has the effect of making sure there isn't a massive market crash.


The FTSE100 was 36.9 points down today at 6,023.1. The FTSE250 was down 46.9 points at 9,878.7 and the AIM100 down 26.2 points at 6,427.

Volume was strong despite it being the Friday before the bank holiday weekend with 3.01 billion shares changed hands in 329,614 deals.


China's shock announcement to hike interest rates in a bid to cool down its booming economy sent shock waves across oil and mining heavyweights amid fears demand for commodities will slacken. Investors were once again concerned about the growing situation with Iran.


Today’s look at individual Stocks:


BP was down 7p at 676.5p, Shell was down 32p to 1,961p, Cairn was down 31p at 2,326p and BG Group was down 24p at 737p, ahead of first quarter earnings due on Wednesday.


Miners were also under pressure, with Xstrata down 31p at 1,984p, Rio Tinto down 14p at 3,016p and BHP Billiton down 9.5p at 1,129p. Falls however, were limited by the ongoing sky-high commodity prices with gold spiking higher as investors seek a more secure place to put their money ahead of more trouble with Iran.


Yell Group was another casualty of the falling markets today, dropping 15.5p to 514p, as brokers were less than impressed by telephone directories publisher €3.5bn bid for Spanish peer TPI. In response, UBS repeated its reduce advice, as it cautioned the deal takes away from the US growth story and the timing is not ideal given the Competition Commission review on the UK directories market is due sometime in May.


British Sky Broadcasting also closed lower, down 5p at 525.5p, on news the auction for the live English Premiership football rights will now move on to a second round of bidding. This morning the Premier League said it had awarded three of the six packages of 23 games per season to BSkyB. The remaining three packages, covering three years to the end of the 2009/2010 season are set to go to a further round of bidding. The news fuelled fears the re-opening of the auction means BSkyB is facing stiff competition for the remaining packages.


Smith & Nephew was also under pressure after Morgan Stanley downgraded the company to equal-weight from overweight. The shares fell 8.5p to 453.5p.


One stock on the up was Standard Chartered topping the blue chips gainers' board, up 41p at 1,456p, as the sector benefited from a strong performance from Chinese banks overnight after China increased its lending rates.


Life insurer Friends Provident was also on the up, but only slightly, up 0.5p higher at 196.75p, after beating market forecasts with a 26% rise in life and pensions sales in the first quarter. The UK's fourth-biggest listed insurer, said group life and pensions new business for the first three months of 2006 came in at £1.331bn, ahead of the £1.223bn average analyst forecast. In response, Merrill Lynch reiterated its neutral advice and said the results were strong with sales comfortably ahead of its flagged £1.216bn.


GSK was also on the up by a positive broker comment, up 24p at 1,556p, after Morgan Stanley upped its recommendation to overweight from equal-weight following the UK healthcare group's better-than-expected Q1 earnings statement yesterday.


Mitchells & Butlers dropped 3p to 492.25p after announcing a raft of measures aimed at repelling the advances of property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz, whose recent hostile takeover bid was rebuffed by the UK pubs group. The company plans to refinance in the second half of the year and return up to £500m to shareholders in calendar year 2006.


Matalan was also a top performer today, 6.25p higher at 199p, after the retailer was upgraded to in-line from under-perform at Goldman Sachs ahead of results next week.


There shall be no update on Monday as the UK markets are closed due to a bank holiday weekend.