THE Dublin market moved firmly ahead to a new high, boosted by the renewed strength on European markets and the continued recovery on Wall Street after Monday's hiatus when the Dow plunged 190 points.
There were gains right across the board and dealers believe that further rises may be in the offing, with every possibility that the ISEQ would break through the 3300 level in the next few days. There was no sign yet of any significant slackening of interest in a market that Davy describes as "on the cheap side when valued against domestic bonds".
Bank of Ireland made strong gains from its overnight 654p sterling and closed on 728p, an effective gain of 15p. AIB was 2p higher on 515p while CRH was again in demand and closed up 4p on 698p. Weakness in the JS Corp share in New York did not impact on Smurfit, which was 3p higher on 195p.
Among second liners, the best performance came from Ryanair, which was up 11p on 331p, while Independent continued its strong run and was 10p higher on 390p.
Greencore gained 5p to 330p, Kerry was unchanged on 635p as the fall in the coop holding from 52 per cent to 39 per cent was confirmed. Kingspan jumped 20p to a new high of 820p while Irish Permanent was 3p higher on 613p.
Kenmare disclosed that it placed 4.67 million shares at 23p sterling to fund exploration.
James Crean was one of the few fallers, dropping 29p to 215p with further weakness in store - at least that is the view of Dublin investment house Dolmen Securities. With refreshing candour that spurns the usual brokerspeak, Dolmen recommends investors to sell Crean shares, and says "the shares are likely to fall rapidly and retouch the levels last seen in January, circa 170p".
To say the least, Dolmen is scathing about Crean. "The company has now cut its dividend twice this decade and has rarely lived up to the expectations of the market. There appears to be a complete change in emphasis within the business and investors can now correctly feel very uncertain about the real strategic direction of the group." No punches pulled by the Dolmen pundit.
