AIB must be wondering what it has to do to impress the stock market. It reports full-year results at the upper end of forecasts, dips its toe into Internet banking and its shares go precisely nowhere. And AIB would have suffered the ignominy of actually falling after its results were it not for some late buying that brought the share back from a low of €8.50 to close unchanged on €8.60.

The pattern was the same in other financial stocks, but Bank of Ireland fared worst and hit a low of €6.10 before closing down 23 cents on €6.20. Anglo Irish lost five cents to €2.22 while Irish Life went as low as €7.65 before ending five cents weaker on €7.70.

Industrials were mixed but CRH continued to recover from last week's over-selling and went as high as €18.30 before closing up 35 cents on €18.00. The surge in British telecom stocks on the back of proposals by the British government to cut Internet costs did not help Eircom which was 15 cents lower on €4.43.

ITG was once again the focus of some extraordinary trading on the back of its increased investment in Orbis and hit a high of €25.10 before ending €1.30 higher on €22.10. This share was under €10 at the start of the year and was trading at €16 as recently as last Friday. Horizon succumbed to more profit-taking and lost 45 cents to €10.05.

On overseas markets, Baltimore rebounded from Tuesday's selling and dealt up £9.50 to £113.50 in London, and continued to rise on Nasdaq where it was trading over $17 higher above $181 as the Irish market closed.