Trading stays light as investors await clues to future direction

THE Irish market forged ahead to close just short of its all-time high, although turnover was thin for the second successive day with most investors waiting to see whether the current strength will be maintained.

Views on where the market will go differ, but Goodbody is in the bulls' camp and has revised its end-year forecast of the ISEQ upwards from 2575 to 2700. The broker suggests, however, that the Irish market will slow down in the slack few months ahead before picking up again later in the year.

There was little to excite on the market yesterday, but CRH jumped 6p to 583p on renewed British buying interest - in London almost 1.5 million shares traded as the share rose 2p to 597p sterling. Smurfit was 1p easier on 174p while, among the financials, Bank of Ireland was 4p higher on 457p ahead of today's full-year results. AIB gained 2p to 340p.

DCC was 2p easier after it bought out the Scottish Provident stake in Printech in a mix of cash and shares worth £3.4 million. Part of the consideration will involve 1.1 million DCC shares being issued to Scottish Provident. Golden Vale was unchanged on 67p as the a.g.m. was warned that a milk price cut of 13p a gallon was required to fully compensate for lost dairy margins.

Few believe, however, that the milk price will be cut by anything like that amount, although Golden Vale will be keen to reassure investors that it is not favouring its milk suppliers unduly at the expense of investors.

There was a flurry of activity among the explorers with Celtic jumping as high as 35p before closing up 10p on the day on 33p.

Navan continued to move ahead and was up 7 1/2p to 216 1/2p in a sterling deal while Ivernia remained in demand after the Outokumpu share sale and closed 4p on a new high of 90p, a full 15p higher than the price Outokumpu got for its 12.4 million shares.