The resurgence in banking stocks gathered further momentum yesterday, as the three big financial stocks all notched up sizeable gains with good-sized volumes. There is general agreement - albeit belatedly for many investors who sold at the bottom - that the banks have been oversold and were due to bounce back. The level of recovery over the past four weeks has been quite remarkable, with Bank of Ireland up 28 per cent and AIB up almost 20 per cent. The improvement has been a timely one for those AIB shareholders who opted to take their dividends in shares and not cash - those dividend shares, issued at €9.40, are now worth €11.58.

Yesterday, some of the biggest volumes were once again in Bank of Ireland, where 3.7 million shares traded as the share bounded ahead 35 cents to €8.58. AIB was even more active, with almost 4.3 million shares being traded as their price moved 18 cents higher to €11.58. Irish Life was 12 cents higher on €11.00 on turnover of 1.6 million shares.

Leading industrials were also firmer, but less active, with CRH up 35 cents on €18.00 and Eircom two cents firmer on €2.54. Smurfit, however, continued to struggle, edging one cent lower. to €1.92. Ryanair gained 20 cents to €8.60.

Elsewhere, more small-scale profit-taking dragged IAWS 20 cents lower to €7.10 and Fyffes, which seems to be in free-fall, lost another two cents to €0.78 (the shares traded at €3.98 earlier in the year). Marlborough jumped 35 cents in small volumes to €2.60 as corporate news is awaited by the few in the market with an interest in the stock.