The blue-chip index's six-session losing streak may have come to an end today, but defence groups were stuck in retreat over the prospect of being hit by yet more budget cuts in the US.
Squabbling among politicians in Washington over how to cut the country's deficit came to a head last night after a so-called "super-committee" admitted it had failed to agree on how to tackle the national debt.
It makes automatic cuts of around $1 trillion (£638.28 billion) almost inevitable - around half of which is set to be faced by defence programmes.
Morgan Stanley tried to put a positive spin on it, saying "the actual level of cuts could be different", but Meggitt - which gets over half of its revenues from the US - fell 8.1p to 377p.
Meanwhile, BAE Systems retreated 3p to 259.2p, extending a terrible run that has seen it drop more than 9% in little more than a week, after JP Morgan Cazenove slashed its earnings forecasts for the next two years and cut its target price to 302p from 329p.
"We continue to see numerous reasons not to buy BAE," warned analysts from the heavyweight broker, who added that the group was "unlikely to outperform its peers until it can answer the question, what happens to growth post 2013?"
Although the FTSE 100 rose for the first time in seven days, traders refused to label it as anything more than a small relief rally. The top-tier index climbed a mere 30.33 points to 5252.93, meaning it remains close to its lowest level for six weeks.
The miners were among those managing to rebound, with Eurasian Natural Resources advancing 12p to 612p, while Ferrexpo - frequently touted as a potential takeover target - ticked up 17.4p, or 7.18%, to 259.7p after Goldman Sachs gave the iron ore producer a "buy" rating.
Any other day, HomeServe losing over 9% of its share price, plummeting 23p to 226.6p, would have been the horror story on the FTSE 250. Yet the fall of the self-styled "fifth emergency service", after it warned it could lose as many as 240,000 customers this year in the wake of its potential mis-selling scandal, paled in comparison with Thomas Cook.
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The troubled tour operator dipped a huge 26.42p - shedding nearly two-thirds of its share price - to 14.65p as the company announced it had entered talks with its banks over borrowing more cash, while its admission that trading had "deteriorated" dragged rival Tui Travel back 9.9p to 140.7p.
