ISEQ climbs in otherwise dull day

FERRY and freight services group, Irish Continental (ICG), Paddy Power, DCC and Elan were among the best performing stocks in an otherwise dull day’s trading in Dublin, yesterday.

The latter was up by 13c at €5.26. For shareholders in Elan, this simply meant a return to where the stock left off at the end of last week; having slipped by 16c on Monday.

ICG gained 50c to close at €10.20, DCC was up by 16c at €15.45, while Paddy Power gained 10c to close at €17.20.

In truth, yesterday’s trading on the ISEQ was most notable for the fact that the index’s overall marginal climb (by all of 0.24%, or 6.87 points to 2,865.15 points) checked Monday afternoon’s ominous looking 3.14% reversal.

Indeed, most international markets of note managed to turn themselves around yesterday. Down by 1.5% on Monday, London’s FTSE index was back up by nearly 1% yesterday. It was a similar story for Paris’ CAC, which lost 2% in value on Monday. Frankfurt’s DAX gained 0.9% – or 79 points – yesterday, recovering to an extent from its 2% decline at the beginning of the week.

While the US markets had suffered in the aftermath of poor consumer confidence data, earlier in the week, they rebounded yesterday thanks to better-than-anticipated company earnings figures and national housing and inflation data.

The Dow Jones was up by 0.8% at 9,214 points while the Nasdaq advanced by as much as 1.1% to 1,952 points.

In Japan, Tokyo’s Nikkei index recovered 0.2% of the 3% it lost on Monday – finishing Tuesday trading up by 16 points at 10,285.

Elsewhere in Dublin, paper and packaging group Smurfit Kappa was down by 2.14% – or 11c – at €5.03 and the Irish-Swiss bakery group, Aryzta followed on from its €1.02 dip on Monday by dropping another 18c in share value to €23.30.

Concrete and building materials company, Readymix was down by nearly 6% at 16c after reporting a €6.9m first half loss.

Its larger industry counterpart, CRH clawed back 9c to close at €17.60, after having fallen by 58c on Monday.

It was another largely disappointing day for the banking stocks – all of which had a rough day on Monday. Losses yesterday were much more minor, however. AIB followed Monday’s 17c loss by shedding a further 6c to close yesterday at €2.01. Irish Life & Permanent & – down by 20c on Monday – was down another 2c to €3.73. Bank of Ireland, also a significant faller earlier in the week, was the only one of the banks to rise yesterday – albeit by 1c to €2.02.

A market upgrade – from “hold” to “buy” – by Merrion Stockbrokers, boosted United Drug by over 2.5% – or 5c – to a closing price of €2.04, meanwhile.