Wall Street's failure to rebound from the two per cent fall on Tuesday and the resulting weakness on European markets meant that Irish stock prices took another beating yesterday with the ISEQ down by the best part of 1.5 per cent.

There seems little likelihood of any recovery in Dublin as Wall Street investors still show fears that first quarter earnings from the high-tech sector in particular may not reach the elevated forecasts of Wall Street analysts. A bad set of figures from any of the high-tech blue-chips such as Intel, Dell or IBM would probably be enough to make the Dow Jones record 10,000 of last week a dim and distant memory.

Share prices were down across the board in Dublin with most of the volume concentrated on the two big banks, CRH and Smurfit. AIB was the most resilient of the leaders and was actually marginally ahead on the day before a late deal left the share unchanged on €15.90 (£12.52). Bank of Ireland was down 45 cents on €19.40 (£15.28) while CRH was 25 cents easier on €15.65 (£12.33).

Smurfit, which has had a strong run in recent weeks, also suffered from the poor sentiment and fell 7 cents to €1.96 (£1.54) while Fyffes lost 12 cents to €2.08 (£1.64) leading to speculation that the group may go back into the market buying shares.

Anglo Irish Bank was 5 cents lower on €2.66 (£2.09), Greencore was 5 cents lower on €3.30 (£2.60) while Independent lost 10 cents to €4.30 (£3.39) even though its results were in line with forecasts and were accompanied by a buoyant trading statement.

Kingspan was 2 cents easier on €2.38 (£1.87) ahead of today's results - chairman and biggest shareholder Eugene Murtagh has indicated that he intends to deal in the shares in the open period after the results.