THERE has been continued uncertainty on the markets this week, ahead of the US presidential election, Gordon Brown's Pre-Budget Report and the MPC deliberating on UK interest rates, writes Rob Arkwright of Hargreave Hale & Co.

With the initial verdict seeing George W Bush as the victor, the market responded positively.

However, with this result being somewhat premature following the confusion over the result in Florida, the ongoing saga of a recount caused the markets to retreat.

A Bush victory appears to be more favourable for the markets, as Bush is a tax cutter compared with Gore, who is a spender.

Bush is also seen as more sympathetic towards the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries. Both these sectors saw good rises on Wednesday.

British Telecom announced its eagerly awaited results this week, with the main focus being on its restructuring plans.

Pretax profit fell to £1.03 billion from £1.66B, largely due to the huge costs paid for the third generation mobile licences.

However, more importantly was its strategic review, where it intends to reduce its massive debts by £10B through disposals and spin-offs.

This includes the flotation of up to 25pc of BT Wireless and 25pc of Yell, its Yellow Pages business, by the end of the year.

Among other figures reported this week, Baltimore, the Irish internet security company, announced widening losses, but revenues increased by 215pc.

A similar scenario occurred with Bookham Technology, the fibre optic components maker, with revenues rising by 1,027pc to £7.7 million, from the same quarter the previous year. However, its losses also widened from £4.1 million to £6.4m.

Finally, Thus, formerly known as Scottish Telecom, whose share price has completely collapsed following the decline in TMT stocks and a profit warning, recovered slightly after its results.

Its pretax losses fell to £37.2m from £61.2m a year earlier, and Scottish Power, its former parent company and majority shareholder, agreed to pump a further £100m into the flagging telecom.