Wall Street's negative response to the Federal Reserve's half-point cut in interest rates meant that leading Irish shares fell heavily with the ISEQ closing down more than 2.5 per cent. While there was some sizeable trading in selected stocks, there was no overwhelming rush to sell the market, dealers said.

The latest batch of corporate results did not impress the market and Independent was marked down 16 cents to €2.69 as analysts moved to downgrade their current year earnings forecasts. Kingspan also continued to fall after poorly received results, and the shares were down another 65 cents yesterday on €3.25, bringing the fall since the results were announced to almost 25 per cent.

Among the leaders, the biggest trading was in CRH where more than 2.3 million of the nil paid rights dealt as the units fell 87 cents to €6.15. Nil paid rights trade in line with the underlying shares and that was the case yesterday when CRH shares were down 58 cents on €16.97 after hitting a low of €16.60 in earlier trading. Renewed Vodafone weakness saw Eircom fall five cents to €2.38.

Among the banks, more than 2.2 million Bank of Ireland shares traded as the price fell 26 cents to €8.82 while AIB was 41 cents lower on €10.82 in much smaller volumes. Anglo Irish was down 14 cents on €3.30 while Irish Life fell 28 cents to €11.27.

Baltimore's downward spiral shows no signs of stopping and the shares were down another 1 1/4p yesterday on 158p sterling. Parthus fell 6 1/2p to below its IPO prices and closed on 84p sterling. On Nasdaq, Iona and Smartforce were both trading sharply lower in early Nasdaq trading.