With the weather so miserable, perhaps it should come as no surprise that investors wanted to buy into the FTSE’s big holiday companies yesterday.

Shares in TUI Travel rose 3.7p to 250½p after an upbeat “buy” note from Panmure Gordon, saying that consensus estimates on the stock were too low, with the market worried about a more difficult trading environment than booking trends indicated.

A quarterly survey of customers by TUI also showed that confidence regarding personal finances and job security was improving, which should translate into more holiday sales. In addition, Panmure noted that none of TUI’s big markets were reporting a fall in planned holiday spending.

Thomas Cook rose 4.2p to 221.2p after Manny Fontenla-Novoa, its chief executive, increased his holding. The company is one of the most likely candidates for relegation to the FTSE 250, with the index’s next quarterly reshuffle based on today’s closing prices. Rentokil Initial, down 0.8p at 101p, is also close to demotion.

Aggreko, the provider of temporary power sources, up 3p at 788p, and Petropavlovsk, the Russian goldminer, 16p down at £12.46, are the promotion candidates.

Overall, the FTSE 100 fell 11.70 points to 5,310.66 as investors sold off stock in the banking sector before tomorrow’s Pre-Budget Report, for which the Government is thought to be considering a new tax on bankers’ bonuses, or even the banks.

Royal Bank of Scotland was the biggest faller, down 1.63p at 33p, as details of its participation in the Government’s Asset Protection Scheme were disclosed. Lloyds Banking Group fell 2.31p to 53.69p, Barclays dropped 6.45p to 297.05p and HSBC was down 10.8p at 712.8p.

The London Stock Exchange Group also lost ground, falling 12½p to 740p, after it revealed that the average number of daily trades in November fell 21 per cent on the previous year.

Miners were under pressure amid weaker metal prices because of a stronger US dollar, with Eurasian Natural Resources losing 19½p to 901½p and Fresnillo down 15½p at 849½p.

United Utilities rose 4.3p to 499.6p amid reports that it had hired bankers to oversee an auction of a number of its assets.

On the FTSE 250, Shanks Group soared 38.4p to 128½p after the waste management company rejected a £536 million approach, believed to be from Carlyle, the private equity group.

Renishaw eased 3p to 563p, despite making ground earlier after the engineer said that it would reverse a voluntary pay cut agreed by staff, based on its improving performance.

Dignity rose 9½p to 580½p after UBS advised its clients to “buy” the funeral homes group, saying that its defensive growth attributes had been overlooked this year.

CSR fell 16.1p to 386.7p after RBS downgraded its rating of the bluetooth chip maker to “hold” from “buy”, warning that other chip makers could start integrating bluetooth technology into chips, negating the need for CSR’s technology to be sold separately.

• New York: Investors were cautious, despite comments by Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, who said that interest rates would remain low as the economy proceeded on a slow recovery. At the close the Dow Jones industrial average was little-changed, 1.21 points up at 10,390.11.

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