Given the carnage on international markets, it was nothing short of remarkable that the Irish market managed to restrict losses to a few cents for most of the leaders. But with old and new economy stocks tumbling on Wall Street after the market closed, dealers believe that the turn of the Irish market to see some heavy selling may come when trading reopens on Monday morning.
Irish technology stocks, however, took an almighty mauling, and Baltimore is now at just one-third of its high of a few weeks ago, while most of the others were also well down on the day. Baltimore itself fell £17.27 to £53.44 sterling in London and followed that with a $26 1/2 fall to $84 1/2 in the opening session on Wall Street.
Trintech fell €3.65 to €29.75 on the Neuer Markt, but confined its opening session losses on Nasdaq to less than a dollar to trade around $28. Trading in market debutante Riverdeep continued to be volatile - in mid-session in New York, the company was almost $4 lower, dipping below $22. Smartforce was over $2 lower on $34 3/4, while Iona fell over $7 in the opening session to $57.
On the home market, the only volatility was in Eircom, which fell to a low of €4.00 - just 10 cents above the July flotation price - before recovering to close 8 cents lower on €4.10. Leading industrial and financial shares were little changed, with CRH down 3 cents on €19.72, Bank of Ireland 5 cents easier on €7.65, Smurfit down 4 cents on €2.48 and AIB unchanged on €11.20.
Dunloe Ewart was unchanged on 42 cents - 5 cents below the buyout offer from chairman Noel Smyth - while Ivernia was unchanged on 49p sterling (€0.82), the price at which 10.4 million shares were placed with North American investors.
