Another day, another record high for the FTSE 100 as, for the third time this week and the seventh time this year, the index of London’s biggest listed companies closed at a new peak.

A brighter economic picture, the prospect of interest rate cuts, strong corporate earnings and takeover talk have driven the advance in the Footsie in recent weeks. On this occasion, though, the impetus was provided by some eye-popping figures from Apple overnight, including a $110 billion share buyback, together with “goldilocks” job numbers in the United States that revived optimism over interest rate cuts in America. Thus the FTSE 100 rose by 41.34 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 8,213.49 and a weekly gain of 73.66 points, or 0.9 per cent.

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