Good news from the embattled supermarket sector and hopes of more Eurozone money-printing boosted markets on Wednesday.
Sainsbury's fuelled positive sentiment with a statement forecasting annual profits above expectations. Its shares soared 29.5p to 258.8p.
Rivals Tesco (LON:TSCO) and Morrisons (LON:MRW) also benefited, rising 7.05p to 178.35p and 8.4p to 164.5p respectively.
The sector has been in need of a fillip as the established UK chains struggled to keep market share amid competition from discounters and online retailers.
The news helped the FTSE 100 Index to get the final session of September off to a positive start, up 105.59 points at 6,014.
Analysts also attributed the rise to hopes of more quantitative easing from the European Central Bank ahead of inflation data tipped to be 0.0%.
The upbeat sentiment boosted the Dax in Frankfurt by 186 points to 9,636 and the CAC-40 in Paris by 85 points to 4,428.
Back in the UK, there was more negative economic news with the UK consumer confidence index from market data group GfK falling four points to +3 in September.
Joe Staton, head of market dynamics at GfK, said: "Consumers are in a depressed ‘back-to-school’ mood this month with a dip in people feeling good about the wider economy and their own personal economic circumstances."
But the Nationwide Building Society lifted sentiment in the housing sector by reporting a 0.5% rise in house prices in September, causing the year-on-year gain to climb to 3.8%.
Housebuilders benefited, with Persimmon (LON:PSN) gaining 22p to 2021p and Barratt Developments (LON:BDEV) hardening 7p to 644.5p.
In corporate news, Topps Tiles (LON:TPT) strengthened 0.75p to 148.75p on a forecast of a 5.3% rise in like-for-like revenue in the 53 weeks to October 3.
French electrical retailer Darty (LON:DRTY) sparked 12.5p to 93.5p on news that another French electrical and stationery retailer, Fnac, had approached it with an all-share offer valuing its shares at 101p each.
Mobile data services supplier Crimson Tide (LON:TIDE) rang up 0.18p to 1.95p after first-half pre-tax profit more than doubled to £60,000.
Strategic Minerals (LON:SML) rose by a fifth or 0.05p to 0.3p as its Cobre operation made a US$162,000 profit in the six months to June 30 against a loss of US$2,441,000 a year earlier.
- changes opening call --
London’s blue chips are set to end the autumn quarter on the up according to the early indicators.
Financial spread bet firms suggest the Footsie may add more than 10 points when trading gets underway, even though US and Asian markets rallied overnight.
London fell 50 points to 5,980 yesterday.
One stat that is going to be quoted a lot is that world stock markets are heading for their worst quarter since 2011 despite any gains today.
China has been the main culprit with its main index, the Shanghai Composite, dropping almost 29% and pulling down other markets in Asia and also further afield.
US markets saw a mild bounce overnight, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average 47 higher at 16,049. Nasdaq eased slightly while the S&P 500 was flat.
Asian markets rallied with Tokyo climbing 3%, Hong Kong 1.5% and China 0.8%.
Company news will be dominated by supermarket Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY) and few people are expecting an upbeat statement, though at least, according to the recent report from market research group Kantar, the chain has stopped losing ground to Aldi and Lidl recently.
Contract caterer Compass Group is also reporting while Topps Tiles will give an insight in to how much we are spending on our houses.