ISEQ recovery nears 3,000

THE ISEQ continued its solid start to the week with another 1% rise, pushing the market back up towards the 3,000 point, a psychological marker it has not breached since May 2011.

Yesterday’s rise was driven by strong gains for traditional heavy-hitters such as Aryzta, Kerry Group, Smurfit Kappa Group and CRH, while healthcare services firm ICON, drinks group C&C and insurance specialist FBD also had a decent day. Exploration company Providence Resources, support services group DCC and bookies Paddy Power all suffered double digit falls.

In all, the ISEQ followed jumped 47 points, a 1.6% gain, to 2,979 points.

Despite Monday’s meeting between the German and French leaders failing to ease wholesale investor concern that enough is being done to quell the eurozone debt crisis, all European benchmark indexes, except for Portugal and Greece, rose.

In London, a mix of mining, banking and retail stocks (Marks and Spencer, particularly, benefiting from a generally upbeat trading statement showing good sales growth over the festive period) boosted the FTSE-100 index by 1.5%. In Paris, the CAC-40 was up by nearly 2.7%, while gains of 2.42%, 2.34% and 3.08% were seen in Germany on the DAX, Spain on the IBEX and Italy on the FTSE MIB.

In early trading yesterday, Tokyo’s Nikkei crept up by just under 0.5% to 8,422 points, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong was up by nearly 1% to reach just over the 19,000 point mark.

US markets were lifted yesterday on the back of new figures showing more employers willing to hire staff as the country’s economy continues to pick up.