CRH, Ryanair help Iseq finish up

Strong performances from leading stocks CRH and Ryanair kept the Dublin market ahead of its European peers today, dealers said.

The Iseq index of Irish shares closed up 1.94 per cent, or 50.49 points, at 2648.67 largely thanks to the performance of both stocks.

CRH, which alone accounts for around one-third of the entire index, closed up 5.37 per cent at €15.98 despite issuing a trading statement saying that first-half pre-tax profits would be down over 80 per cent on 2008 at €100 million this year.

Investors immediately reacted to the news by selling the stock, which dropped as low as €14.46 in the morning before staging a Lazarus-like come back which saw it touch highs of €16.33 before slipping back slightly to its eventual closing price.

Dealers suggested that the recovery might have received an extra push as short sellers of the stock were caught out, and then had to take remedial action.

“I would say there was an element out there who were saying that the stock has massively underperformed its peers in recent weeks, and decided to buy,” one observed.

“A lot of the shorts might have been a little bit caught out and started buying their position back.”

The Iseq’s performance was in contrast to other European markets. The FTSE-100 was down eight points at 4187.

Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 fell for the fourth straight day. The index closed down 0.7 per cent to 200.2.

Ryanair was the other big performer in Dublin yesterday. The low-cost airline closed up 3.7 per cent at €3.215 having traded at around €3.20 for most of the day.

The company’s shares closed particularly low yesterday, dealers said.

Cider maker C&C last further ground today, but dealers largely blamed profit-taking for the slip. The company closed down 4.03 per cent at €2.38.