Air strikes on Iraq aren't what they used to be - at least in the eyes of equity investors! Time was when mention of cruise missiles and Iraq in the same breath would have had investors rushing into the safe haven of the dollar and US treasury bonds with equity markets taking a hammering. Not any more. The latest strikes on Iraq raised barely a flicker of interest on the stock markets and share prices rose sharply, with Wall Street showing no indication that it is worried about events in the Persian Gulf.

Futures-led buying and the firmer Dow boosted the London market, while strong demand for the banks and CRH drove the Irish market ahead by more than 1 per cent on top of the 2 per cent gains on Wednesday. Again, there is no great volume involved in any of this end-of-year buying.

The banks and CRH have been boosted by expectations that they will be included in the key euro indexes such as Eurotop and Eurobloc.

CRH has benefited from being heavily tipped by Merrill Lynch which has described the share as its "bull stock" for 1999 in the European building materials sector.

"Compared with peers, none can match CRH's EPS or total return record over 5, 10 or 20 years," drools Merrill. CRH closed up 23p on a new high of £12.

Bank of Ireland missed out on the Wednesday surge by AIB, but made up ground yesterday and closed 40p higher on £14.20 after peaking on £14.30. AIB itself was 1p easier on £11.15, coming back from a £11.25 high. Other financials were little changed, and speculation that Anglo Irish is close to buying Smurfit Paribas did little for Anglo shares, which were down 2p on 171p.

Independent's plan to make £90 million worth of cost savings over the next five years was given the thumbs-up by the market and the shares were driven ahead 20p to 240p in anticipation of earnings upgrades to reflect the cost savings. The shares, however, are still not much off their 1998 low and are still well off the 475p from earlier this year.

Esat shares were unchanged on Nasdaq even though the group's Dublin broker has dramatically increased its forecast losses for the telecoms group this year and next. Davy has increased its loss forecast for 1998 from £39 million to £43.6 million and losses per share from 104p to 116p. For 1999, Davy has increased the loss forecast from £24.7 million to £54.7 million and losses per share from 63p to 137p.

The higher losses are mainly due to the higher cost base as Esat establishes its domestic network and also because of a lower contribution for 45 per cent-owned Digifone due to higher investment levels.

Elsewhere on Nasdaq, Elan continued to improve from recent weakness and was trading just over 75 cents higher on $62.31.

CBT was also marginally firmer after Wednesday's profit-taking, while Icon continues to be one of the best of the Irish stocks on Nasdaq and was trading 12 cents up at $31.