Glencore says float is still on despite flight from commodities

"No comment," said a PR person desperately fumbling to justify their fees. "Utter bullshit," said someone else, off the record, for reasons passing understanding.

The story that sped around town was that the untimely tumble in commodities prices across the globe was forcing a rethink.

Even folk who wanted to believe it didn't for long, but it captured the imagination for a while, especially with the FTSE 100 enduring another lunge downwards fed by falling oil and mining shares.

Glencore was finally stirred into action. A source close to the company said: "There is no foundation to these rumours whatsoever. The UK listing continues as planned. The company has today launched its Hong Kong offer."

By then, the FTSE was already down 85.98 points at 5889.8, an even worse loss than it saw yesterday.

The shift from commodities into cash seems to be gaining momentum. Gold took a hit, slipping below $1500 per ounce. Silver miner Fresnillo followed, off 76p at 1335p, making it the biggest loser today. Holders of Kazakhmys, off 3.72p at 1218p, and Anglo American, down 98.5p at 2892.5p were also feeling some pain.

News that the BA strike is probably off and excellent results from BT weren't enough to induce enthusiasm.

BT slipped 0.54p to 201.36p today, but they have soared from about 80p in 2008, which shows there's still money to be made in the stock market from old-fashioned strategies such as buying and holding shares in companies with a decent yield (BT's is 4.2%).

Otherwise, stories were thin on the ground.

Someone asked: What does the appointment of Dick Broadbent as the new chairman of Tesco mean for the stock?

"Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, click, brrrrrrr........" goes the conversation with the City old-timer, desperately casting around for a reason to buy the shares, or in fact any shares.

Boredom has been a common experience for many market players for months - not much is happening, and unless you're on the wrong side of the commodities play, there's not even that much to fear.

Positions of safety were taken a while ago, clients remain skittish, volumes are as moribund as they have been for most of the last two years.

For traders whose long-term investments are short-term investments gone wrong, these are frustrating times.

"I ain't seeing the screens right," moaned one of the crowd. "Just not seeing it".

His best attempt today to generate gossip that might shift money away from dull, long-only pension funds and in his direction was the notion that the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund is engineering a 450p a share bid for Northumbrian Water. It has a 27% stake, so it's not an entirely ridiculous idea, but it's not a new one either.

Punters sipped at the edges, the stock gained 2.2p to 359.2p.

3i was the best gainer, up 19.3p at 290.94p on buying from those who think the gap between the funds assets and its stock-market value is bound to close at some point.