AFTER the strong gains of the previous three days, some of the steam went out of the Irish market yesterday, with most of the leaders easing by a couple of pence in thin trading.

Dealers expressed little surprise at the halt to the bull rung and were reassured that there was little evidence of any sizeable profit taking from a market that had been trading at an all time high.

Bank of Ireland drifted off 3p to 449p and it remains to be seen weather all the good news from the Bristol & West acquisition is priced into the share. AIB was unchanged on 332p, while CRH came off its all time high and closed 3p lower on 577p. Smurfit eased back 1p to 172p even though JS Corp was trading firmly on Wall Street.

Elsewhere, Fyffes bounced back 3p to 111p after the big deal involving four million shares at 108p the previous day. IAWS gained 3p to 145p, Independent was 5p higher on 520p and Irish Life lost all of the previous day's grain and closed down upon 253p.

Needless to say, the surprise half point cut in German official interest rates dominated sentiment on the gilt market and any resulting cut in Irish rates should underpin what is an already well bid gilt market.

Dealers expect the Central Bank to follow suit with an STF cut whatever misgivings Dame Street might have about the inflationary impact of another cut in mortgage and bank lending raves.

The STF is largely irrelevant as a gauge of the state of the money market and the current STF of 6.5 per cent is almost 150 basis points above money market levels just over 5 per cent.

Gilt prices were generally firmer at the short and medium dated maturities, and dealers said that there was still strong interest in the Irish market given the gap between Irish and German bond yields.