The weakness on international markets, particularly Wall Street's second successive poor performance, had a depressing effect on the Irish market and most of the stocks that actually traded on a very thin day closed weaker.
With the Christmas wind-down already in progress, dealers expect no great improvement in the next week or two, with volumes remaining low.
Of the leading stocks, CRH was in the greatest demand although the share drifted off its recent highs to close down 2p on the day on £11.48. Merrill Lynch has produced an exceptionally bullish report on CRH and has put a 12-month price target of £13.00 on the shares.
On CRH, Merrill Lynch believes "positive surprises should continue", adding that CRH should benefit from favourable comparisons with other sector heavyweights within the euro zone.
Among the leaders, it was mostly downward movement but turnover was so low that price movements are irrelevant in gauging whether the market attitude to individual shares has altered.
Prospective marriage partners Irish Life and Irish Permanent continued to move in tandem, with Irish Life drifting 6p lower to 604p while Irish Permanent lost 10p to 985p.
Elsewhere among the financials, AIB was 5p lower on £10.47, Bank of Ireland lost 2p to £11.48 while Anglo Irish was 1 1/2p firmer on 172p with many in the market taking the view that Anglo may be the financial stock involved in the next wave of rationalisation in the sector. First Active drifted 8p lower to 322p while Hibernian was 5p easier on 725p.
Golden Vale improved 2p to 90p while Independent was 7p higher on 225p as director Mr Peter Cosgrove bought 25,000 shares in the market at 220p each.
Kerry lost 20p to 900p while Smurfit continued to trade in a narrow range and was 1/2p higher on 121 1/2p.
On Nasdaq, some of the steam went out of the CBT share price with profit-taking knocking $1/4 off the share to $16 1/4 by the time the market closed with just over two million shares having traded.
Iona was the best of the Irish stocks and was traded $1 1/2 higher on $29 1/2. Elan, however, continued to drift, with Wall Street finding it difficult to decide a level for the shares.
