THE Irish market continued to trade merrily without really going anywhere, but share prices are reasonably well supported and the only real danger is if London. or New York takes a dive.
There is no real pattern to this week's trading and some investors seem to have decided to take a break after the past few weeks' market hysteria.
Price movements were negligible, although some of the second-liners moved by 10p or more. Among the leaders, CRH dropped 3p to 638p while Smurfit was unchanged on 172p after a modest overnight fall by JS Corps financials were marginally weaker, with MB and Bank of Ireland both down 1p on 374p and 497p respectively. Irish Life drifted 3p off its high to close 260p, while Irish Permanent was unchanged on 460p.
Among the second-liners, Adare jumped 10p to 520p, Anglo Irish was 1 1/2p higher on 73 1/2p, Grafton gained 10p to 685p, while heavily-traded Greencore was 1/2p easier on 356p.
Among the explorers, there was a flurry of sterling-denominated trading in Celtic Resources which traded as high as 35p sterling before closing on 32 1/2p sterling, the equivalent of a 61 1/2p fall from its previous mark of 40p. Tullow gained 3p to 100p ahead of interim results later in the week where investors will be looking for an update on drilling.
Share dealings worth £27 million (when adjusted for double counting) were matched on Monday although this figure is distorted slightly by the late matching sale of 2.1 million Hibernian shares by AIBIM.
