AFTER Wall Street's stunning overnight performance and strong gains in London, the Irish market pushed ahead in steady trading. There were no major gains but most stocks closed up a penny or two or were, at worst, unchanged.

There was lots of corporate news involving financial shares but most of it, bar the half year figures from Anglo Irish, was pretty inconsequential. The Anglo Irish results were good but no better than the market had expected and the share was 1p firmer on 82p.

First quarter results from First Maryland failed to have much impact on AIB which closed 2p higher on 465p.

Reports that Bank of Ireland and the Irish Life/Kredietbank joint venture had been shortlisted to bid for a 25 per cent stake in the Hungarian bank K&H at a cost of around £20 million also had little impact. Bank of Ireland closed on 647p sterling, down almost 2p on the day, while Irish Life also closed with a sterling deal at 303 1/2p, again down almost 2p.

Industrials were quiet but Greencore continued to drift after recent downgradings and fell 7p to 323p - a long way off its 390p high of earlier in the year.

Clondalkin was 5p lower on 610p as Standard Life disclosed that it sold almost 680,000 shares last Monday to take its Clondalkin stake to 5.5 per cent.

Smurfit was unchanged on 158p as Siada suggested that the share is likely to see little improvement until June/July when more positive news on industry inventories may flow through. Riada believes, however, that the share has probably reached a trough at current levels and is worth a "hold" tag.