Until yesterday's 2.5 per cent fall in the FTSE 100, it had been a distinctly undramatic week on the markets; now the harbingers of doom will no doubt be out in force, with forecasts of massive falls in share prices.
There was no doubt that yesterday's fall in London came as something of a shock, but so far it seems to be a matter of price corrections in the financial sector rather than anything more fundamental. That will, however, not prevent many investors having a nervous weekend.
In London, the trend in the past few days has been a move out of financials into leading industrials, but volumes have been low and have tended to exaggerate price movements. That shift out of financials has been mirrored in Dublin, where bank share prices fell sharply this week from their record highs, while leading industrial shares - especially CRH and Smurfit - were in enormous demand.
Turnover figures for the five trading days to Thursday show that more than £175 million worth of CRH shares dealt, with £102 million worth of Bank of Ireland, £57 million of AIB and £37 million worth of Smurfit.
For Smurfit, there has been a sea change in investor attitudes towards the stock and, alone among the leaders, Smurfit managed to resist yesterday's selling pressure. The improved prospect for linerboard prices is one factor that has supported the share, but Smurfit has also been successful in securing the support of influential Wall Street investment houses.
Two of these, Bankers Trust and Paine Webber, have produced enthusiastic reports on the Smurfit shares, and Paine Webber's, Mr Rich Schneider - one of the highest-regarded paper analysts on Wall Street - has set a 280p target price for Smurfit.
Smurfit was also given support from some good results from some of the Scandinavian producers, as evidenced by the excellent results from Munskjo, the Swedish packaging group in which Smurfit has a 29 per cent stake.
The first set of results that Ryanair has produced as a public company generally met expectations, but some cautious comments about future trading produced a negative reaction in the market. The fall in the share price from 390p before the results to yesterday's close of 345p may be more a case of the market using the results to bring the share price back to a more realistic level rather than any fundamental change in attitude towards the stock.
The decision by Norwich Union to take an Irish listing failed to generate any great enthusiasm, with little trading in the stock in Dublin despite the buying surge in London ahead of Norwich's expected accession to the FTSE 100 next month.
Finally, the Irish market - which already faces the loss of Waterford Foods albeit because of the welcome merger with Avonmore - may suffer the loss of Ulster Television. The dawn raid by Scottish Media (SMG) may not result in an immediate bid but SMG is expected to go into the market for UTV shares over the next few weeks to bring its stake to 29.9 per cent. That will be a clear "hands-off" signal to any other interested party.
