WELL, there we were on Thursday evening with the Irish market in excellent form and just a few points off its all-time high. Excellent results from Greencore had given the market a boost, CRH was on the rebound, the banks were in good demand and even Smurfit looked as it might actually break through the 170p barrier.

And then along came Alan Greenspan to spoil the bull's party, with his thinly-veiled warning that the Fed will hike interest rates if the "irrational exuberance" of stock markets is seen as jeopardising the United States economy.

The Fed chairman's views came as a bolt out of the blue for stock market investors, who have tended to adopt the view that the current bull market has no end in sight. But with US blue-chips up 25 per cent this year, Mr Green- span is clearly concerned that the markets may be setting themselves up for another crash that could cripple the US economy.

And it was not just share prices that took a tumble after the Greenspan remark. Bond prices also fell sharply, and once again Irish bonds fell further than their German counterparts, widening further the yield gap that had narrowed dramatically when convergence trading was at its peak.

This setback for the markets will probably mean that recent broker forecasts of a Greencore share price at 420p within the next six months will have to be revised, not because of anything negative about Greencore, but because the European sugar producers against whom Greencore is usually compared will suffer price setbacks, especially as some are trading on quite weighty multiples.

Greencore still remains an attractive stock and investors in the company know that for a large part of its business the current year has already been mapped out. As the virtual monopoly sugar producer in Ireland, Greencore has been able to steadily increase its operating margins to more than 20 per cent, while the mailing business in Ireland is in the happy position of having its 1996-97 order book completely filled.

Greencore's awesome cash-generative abilities do not mean an acquisition splurge and David Dilger warned that Greencore would tread cautiously when it came to buying.

Greencore has been the focus of some hefty trading in recent months, but this is thought to be largely domestic institutional buying from the KEPIT investment trust and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (DMG) in the wake of the Peter Young affair that could cost DMG £400 million in fines. A few million from selling Greencore shares might not mean a lot to DMG when it comes to meeting the costs of the Young affair, but every little helps.

The Murtagh brothers are understood not to have been best pleased when it leaked out that Kingspan's bid for Ward Building Systems in Britain looks like being successful. A rival management buy-out seems to have fallen by the wayside leaving the way clear for Kingspan to go ahead with its bid. The big question is how Kingspan - with a lot of debt on its balance sheet - will finance a £20-£25 million acquisition. Going to the market looks a likely option despite the latest weakness.