With little action on international markets to provide any stimulus, the Irish market traded sideways in thin trading yesterday. Price movements were negligible and that is likely to be the pattern until the direction of international markets becomes clearer.

Even with an upgrade to "buy" from JP Morgan and a price target of €11.00, Bank of Ireland eased a cent to €9.31 in volume of less than a million shares.

JP Morgan has added Bank of Ireland to its top five overweight picks in the European banking sector and said: "At what we consider to be this attractive valuation, we believe Bank of Ireland gives investors excellent long-term growth prospects through exposure to the Irish economy and a relatively defensive loan portfolio."

AIB fared worst than any of the leading stocks, falling 32 cents to €10.62, while Anglo Irish Bank was unchanged on €3.23 after trading almost two million shares. Irish Life gained 9 cents to €11.51.

The main reason for the marginal rise in the index was a firm showing by Elan which was up €1.10 in Dublin and was trading 74 cents higher on $49.96 on the NYSE at midday.

CRH was 6 cents firmer on €18.06, while Smurfit was unchanged on €2.04. The biggest individual volume was in Waterford Wedgwood which jumped 4 cents to €0.67 with more than 4.5 million shares trading.

Technology shares were generally firmer and in London Parthus was 3 1/4p higher on 38p sterling. Alltracel, boosted by its latest product launch, gained 3 1/2p to 27 1/2p sterling - the share has almost doubled in the space of a week.

On Nasdaq, the tone was firmer with Iona, Smartforce and Riverdeep all marginally higher.