Irish market underperforms Europe with its 2.5% rise

With European markets up between 4 and 6 per cent and New York 4 per cent higher in the opening session, the Irish market - with its 2.5 per cent rise - underperformed international markets. The Irish market has a tendency to underperform - both on the way up and the way down - and that pattern is likely to be maintained in this turbulent period.

Main story of the day was the disclosure that American investment group Capital was in the market for Smurfit shares last Friday, taking advantage of the heavy fall in the share price. Capital disclosed that it had bought 8.74 million Smurfit shares last Friday and had increased its stake by 0.79 per cent to 5.92 per cent.

Leading financials were given a boost by the rebound on overseas markets and by a positive research note on Bank of Ireland in particular from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs prefers Bank of Ireland to AIB on a risk/reward basis and has set a €10.10 12-month target for the shares. Bank of Ireland was 50 cents higher yesterday on €8.57 while AIB gave up virtually all of its early gains and closed up just five cents on €9.45 after peaking at €9.86 in earlier trading.

Most of the industrials were firmer with CRH finally rebounding with a 70 cent gain to €15.65. Fyffes was eight cents higher on €1.17, IAWS gained 30 cents to €8.00 while DCC gained 45 cents to €9 even though a large shareholder Fidelity has been a recent seller, unloading 406,000 shares.

Datalex fell 15 cents to €0.45 after reporting a boardroom reshuffle, Horizon recovered with a 17 cent gain to €0.62 while Waterford Wedgwood was eight cents higher on 0.63 after announcing large-scale short-time working in its crystal business.