THE leading stocks continued to push ahead strongly on the Dublin market despite a standstill in London and early weakness on Wall Street, where the latest employment figures sent mixed signals to the market.
Financial shares were boosted by the bumper half year reports from the British clearers while CRH continued to benefit from a correction following its underperformance of recent weeks.
CRH jumped another 9p to 607p while among the financials, AIB was lp firmer on 354p and Bank of Ireland added 3p to 456p. Looming industrial action has still not affected Irish Life which was 3/4p higher on 245p, with some investors taking the view that Irish Life has no option but to challenge its sales staff and reduce costs. Irish Permanent was 3p higher on 400p.
Industrials were generally firmer, although Smurfit dealt unchanged on 167p as JS Corp closed unchanged overnight. Second liners continued to make ground including Greencore, up 4p on 312p; Independent, up 3p on 295p; Kingspan, up 5p on 360p, and Waterford Foods, up 3p on 88p.
Tullow was marginally stronger on 85 1/2p as the rump of 3.4 million shares from the rights issue was placed at 6p above then 77 1/2p rights price.
The gilt market stayed focused on domestic interest rates, and some believe that the Central Bank may hike its short term facility as early as today - although most believe rates will not go up until next week.
Gilts recovered some of their recent losses but trading volumes remained low with few players willing to take a position.
Five year gilts closed on a yield of 6.86 per cent, the 10 year stock was on a yield of 7.44 per cent while long gilts were yielding 7.57 per cent at the close.
