Solid gains in financials in advance of Fed cut

With markets having already factored in a half-point cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve today, financial shares were the market favourite yesterday with solid gains across the sector. The index may have closed down 1 per cent but this was due to a sharp fall in very thin trading in Elan shares, the heavyweight which makes up almost 20 per cent of the index.

Anglo Irish remains the star of the market and jumped another 16 cents to a new high of €3.64, bringing its gains since the start of the year to almost 16 per cent. The two big banks also traded in some size with AIB up 33 cents to €12.98 while Bank of Ireland was nine cents firmer on €10.69. Irish Life, however, went against the trend and lost 10 cents to €12.55.

Activity in industrials was muted with CRH just a cent easier on €19.99 while Eircom also drifted a cent to €2.63. Smurfit was unchanged on €1.98 while Ryanair bounced back from some recent selling and was 23 cents higher on €11.73. The latest hiatus at Bula saw the basket of 10 shares fall 12 cents to €0.18 while in London where the shares trade in single units, more than 48 million shares traded as the price fell from 1.75p to 1p sterling. Elsewhere in the resource sector Navan jumped 20 cents to €2.02.

There was little action in technology shares but Parthus fell 8-1/2p to 193p sterling after it emerged that Motorola pulled out of a deal with Psion to manufacture smart phones that would have used Parthus's licensed Infostream software.