The Irish market was marginally weaker at 4.30 pm after late afternoon selling off wiped out most of the gains made earlier in the day. The Iseq was down just under 7 points – or 0.11 per cent – largely on weakness in financial stocks.
With volumes light and little newsflow banks drifted towards the end of the day, with Anglo Irish shedding 15 cents to €9.35. Bank of Ireland was around half of per cent weaker at €8.69 with 2.7 million shares traded, while AIB slipped back 2 cents to €13.69.
Irish Life & Permanent bucked the trend among the financial stocks as it raced ahead, adding on nearly 1 per cent to €11.39.
Elsewhere, Fyffes which was aggressively sold off yesterday afternoon recovered some ground today. It was 2 cents stronger at €0.85 although volumes were thin enough with 400,000 shares changing hands.
Construction heavyweight CRH attracted a few buyers as the stock added up 78 cents to €24.38 but again the number of shares traded was low.
There was also some interest in DCC ahead of its full year numbers next Monday, picking up 5 cents to €15.10.
In general, European stocks enjoyed a good day. National Indexes advanced in 11 of the 18 western European markets. The FTSE gained 0.7 per cent, Germany's DAX increased 0.8 per cent and France's CAC 40 was little changed.