The commodity-heavy FTSE 100 closed up 11.7 points, or 0.2 percent, at 5,529.9 points, after slipping 2.6 percent to its lowest close since late March on Thursday.
It has fallen 15 percent this year and 8.8 percent in June.
"It's the calm after the storm after the big falls yesterday and there's not a great deal of confidence to reverse them," said Andrew Bell, head of research at Rensburg Sheppards (LSE: RBG.L).
"Oil prices are high and banks are nervous about lending so there's an overlap between the credit crunch and concerns about inflation... so valuations are low," he said, adding that it was hard to see a catalyst for a share price rally.
Energy companies were the biggest gainers as oil jumped to a record high above $142 a barrel while gold rallied to its strongest level in a month and other metal prices surged, driving up mining stocks.
Tullow Oil (Dublin: TQW.IR) was up 5.3 percent, BG Group (LSE: BG.L) was up 4.2 percent and Cairn Energy (LSE: CNE.L) gained 3.9 percent while miners Lonmin (LSE: LMI.L), BHP Billiton (LSE: BLT.L) , Eurasian Natural Resources and Kazakhmys (LSE: KAZ.L) rose by between 4.1 and 3.5 percent.
Investors fretted about the financial sector, which was worst hit by a credit market crisis that began last year, with banking sector stocks down 5.2 percent on Friday and 28 percent this year .
Sentiment received a further blow as mid-cap Bradford & Bingley (LSE: BB.L) tumbled 20 percent after entrepreneur Clive Cowdery scrapped his plan to inject 400 million pounds into the company, saying the lender's "entrenched" refusal to open its books made a deal impossible.
Barclays (LSE: BARC.L) shed 1.9 percent and HSBC (LSE: HSBA.L) dropped 1.2 percent.
"Aside from the credit crunch, which has been with us for some while now, the position of banks looks even more precarious than it had been a short while ago," said Mike Lenhoff, chief strategist at Brewin Dolphin (LSE: BRW.L) .
"Their capacity to finance economic growth appears to be diminishing by the day. So long as banks remain under pressure, the markets are going to remain under pressure."
Food and drug retailers also slipped, with high prices forcing consumers to cut their spending. Supermarkets struggled to retain their market shares amid concerns that the economy was slowing while media reports about a looming price war added to concerns about margins.
The economy grew more slowly than previously thought in the first quarter as the service sector recorded its weakest performance in more than a decade, official figures showed.
The world's third-largest food retailer Tesco (LSE: TSCO.L) fell 1.3 percent, the third-biggest supermarket group J Sainsbury shed 2.1 percent and the country's fourth-biggest supermarket group Wm Morrison lost 2.3 percent.
Pharmaceuticals also fell, with analysts citing profit taking after gains made this week.
Astrazenica fell 2.4 percent while Reckitt Benckiser (LSE: RB.L) lost 2.7 percent.
Source: http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/27062008/325/energy-mining-stocks-support-struggling-ftse.html
