The Irish Stock Exchange is approaching August having shed the gains made over the month and dealers expect the slide to continue today after the Dow Jones took a tumble in trading last night.

The ISEQ was down 0.62 per cent yesterday, at 5078.20, hitting about the same levels as the fourth week of June.

All eyes remain on the jitters in New York and on London where a switch from equities to bonds was prompted by a weak manufacturing survey.

The London, Frankfurt and Paris stock exchanges all gave back morning gains after the poor start in New York.

In Dublin, the day was again marked by light volumes with the action concentrated on the financial stocks. AIB was at 1035p, up 7p on its opening sterling price of 882p, and Bank of Ireland was down 10p to 1405p in higher volumes.

Irish life shed 14p to 625p while Irish Permanent lost 5p, going to 910p. Hibernian was unchanged at 300p following its 30 per cent increase in six-monthly pre-tax profits to £24 million.

Among the industrial stocks, Powerscreen saw some positive London movement, closing 3p sterling upwards, at 109p sterling (127p). In Dublin, CRH was down 10p to 990p, DCC closed 12p off at 618p and Greencore eased back 5p to 345. Smurfit bucked the trend on a sterling deal of 155p (180.5p), a 1.5p rise on the day, as did Ryanair, up 5p to 565p and Waterford Wedgwood, showing a 1.5p increase on the day on its sterling close of 76p (88.5p). The exploration company, Minmet, saw one deal, trading up 0.25p to 10p. The company announced that it has received acceptances from shareholders representing 82.4 per cent of the outstanding shares in Connary Minerals, pushing its ownership of the company up to 93.87 per cent.

Providence Resources was up 0.25p to 2.75p.

Food stocks tended to follow the trend. Although Golden Vale was up 4p sterling to 97p sterling (113p), Fyffes was unchanged at 133p sterling while IAWS slipped 25p, back to 250p.

Some good news was to be had among other smaller stocks, such as Barlo, up 0.5p to 79p, IWP, up 2p to 372p followed the successful closure of its takeover bid for Jeyes. ITG, however, eased back 6p to 370p after Monday's jump following the re-listing of its shares.