After the low volumes of the past few days, there was much better turnover on the Irish market yesterday. Apart from index heavyweight Elan, which fell 68 cents to #65.20, most of the leaders were stronger on the day, with sizeable trading in the banks and larger industrial stocks.

AIB recovered most of the losses it suffered after its Wednesday results and dealt up 18 cents to #12.20 with almost 3 million shares trading. Bank of Ireland traded up as high as #11.40 but lost all of those gains and ended the day down two cents on #11.15. After excellent first-half results, First Active was as high as #3.20 before closing 10 cents higher on #3.15 - its best level for almost two years.

Among the industrials, price changes were modest with CRH up 12 cents on #19.60, Ryanair up 19 cents on #12.30 while Smurfit continued to trade in size and closed up two cents on #2.37 in turnover of 1.8 million shares. Waterford Wedgwood is going through a weak period and lost another three cents to #1.03 in turnover of two million shares. Another one million IWP shares traded but the share fell five cents to #1.70 and Mr Joe Moran's recent stakebuilding does not seem to have put a floor under the stock. Green gained five cents to #7.35 after half-year results that were in line with forecasts.

Parthus continued its strong recovery on international markets. It closed 4-1/2p higher in London on 631/2p sterling and did even better in later trading on Nasdaq where it was up $1 to $9.15 in midday trading. AIM debutant Alltracel, however, is still finding the going tough and fell 2p to 42-1/2p.