Irish stocks managed to avoid the worst of the carnage on European markets yesterday, but given the Irish market's tendency to have a delayed reaction to overseas events, the next trading on Tuesday may be eventful. If international markets, however, manage to stabilise on Monday the worst may be over for Irish stocks.

Yesterday, bank stocks were heavily sold while Irish technology companies on overseas markets were badly hit by the continued sell off of TMT shares. The worst by a mile was Baltimore which fell 15 per cent in early trading before managing a tentative recovery. The stock still closed down almost 12 per cent on 180p in volume of 11.1 million shares, but it was not immediately clear whether this included the 7.5 million shares held by 3i that were freed this week from lockup.

On the home market, there was heavy trading in financial shares, most of which closed sharply lower. Almost 3.8 million AIB shares traded as the stock lost 13 cents to €11.07 while Bank of Ireland's slide continued and 2.2 million shares dealt as the shares lost 23 cents to €9.15. Irish Life and Permanent fell 45 cents to €11.45 while First Active was seven cents lower on €2.63.

The sharp fall by Vodafone left Eircom 10 cents down at €2.36 while Smurfit managed to regain one cent to €1.83 after Thursday's heavy selling of the stock after the Smurfit Stone profits warning. J.P. Morgan, however, has given Smurfit Stone a long-term buy tag and believes that the price of the shares overly discount the prospect of cuts in product prices.