IT was not a week full of headlines on the equity markets. Indeed it was a week when time seemed to stand still such was the level of activity - at least compared to the hectic levels of the past few months.
Attention shifted towards the foreign exchange markets where the surprise quarter-point rise in interest rates put in serious jeopardy the Central Bank's twin policies of holding inflation while at the same time keeping the pound within the notional 2.25 per cent band against the deutschmark.
Stock markets do not like inflation; it makes investors uneasy that the real value of their current gains may not be realised.
That is why there is concern at the apparent willingness of the authorities to allow the pound fall below parity against sterling and risk inflation.
Keeping the pound within the appropriate ERM bands seemed to be the Central Bank's higher priority.
Unfortunately, neither objective seems to have been realised. At the time of writing, the pound was marooned firmly below sterling at 99.75p but was also well above its maximum preferred rate against the D-mark at almost DM2.48 (the notional upper limit within the ERM for the D-mark against the pound is DM2.4660).
Still the market seems content to wait and see what emerges over the next week or so, and there is no sign yet of the wall of money that has driven Irish bond and equity prices soaring to record levels crumbling.
Against that, many of those overseas institutions which have pumped money into the Irish markets in recent months might just be looking for an excuse to take some profits.
The Irish stock market may be up almost 20 per cent on the year, but the stock traditionally seen as the proxy for the market, Irish Life, has underperformed despite reaching all-time highs.
Company brokers Davy believe, however, that situation should change, based on its attractive yield, its embedded value premium and the return to favour of tile assurance-based investment products.
Irish Life has suffered in the past from loss of market share as the bank assurers like Ark Life and Lifetime capitalised on their parent companies' branch networks to increase their new business by a combined 80 per cent.
A comparatively poor investment performance also did little to generate interest in Irish Life.
In the past year, however, Irish Life has staged a strong recovery and even the on-off prospect of industrial action by field sales staff has had little negative impact on the share.
Indeed, so confident is Davy that analyst Ms Emer Lang believes a price of 313p is within reach over the next 12 months.
According to Davy, the rationalisation over the past two years and a number of product initiatives leaves Irish Life well placed to respond to the challenge from the bank assurers.
But the Davy analyst describes Irish Life's yield as the "most compelling attraction" with prospective 1996 and 1997 yields of 5.8 per cent and 6.3 per cent attractive against any yardstick - be it Irish gilts, British gilts or Irish bank yields.
