It was a game of two halves yesterday on the Irish market, as disappointing US data on new home sales released in the early afternoon swiftly wiped out gains made over the course of a positive morning's trading.

The US figures sent ripples through the Irish financial sector in particular, with the major banks all affected. According to one trader, this was due to negative sentiment towards the housing and mortgage sector spreading to the Irish market. Bank of Ireland, for instance, dropped 28 cent, or 1.68 per cent to €16.35. Irish Life & Permanent managed to buck the trend, however, attracting decent buying interest. Its share price was boosted by 18 cent, or 0.91 per cent, bringing it to €19.90.

Almost a fortnight on from its successful return to the stock market, Smurfit Kappa lost a little impetus yesterday, which traders said was simply due to profit taking. Nevertheless its share price dipped by 45 cent, or 2.4 per cent, to close at €18.30.

The dampening effect of the poor US housing data also filtered through to parts of the construction sector yesterday.

Grafton Group traded as high as €11.96 yesterday before tumbling down to €11.43, a drop of 45 cent from the day before, as the impact of the US data was felt.

Similarly CRH struggled as speculators reacted to the data, closing at €31.98, a drop of 6 cent. News that world oil prices had hit the highest level so far in 2007 had a significant impact on Ryanair, which shed 18 cent - almost 3 per cent - from its price to finish at €5.87. Although Aer Lingus traded up as far as €3.35 during the day, it too slipped back down to finish at €3.25, an overall drop of 2 cent for the day.

On the back of recent news of a Labour Court agreement, Greencore's share price climbed 3 cent to €4.31.