All the talk of a forthcoming market collapse and the 12th anniversary of Black Monday have provided a nervous few days for investors.

However, whether a big tumble in prices is on the way, it has been a poor period for investors in the underperforming Irish market, where the latest stocks to suffer have been the big industrials, which had proved more resilient in the year to date than the financial stocks.

Still, financial shares are down a full 30 per cent from their April high, while industrial stocks are about 10 per cent lower.

The bottle half-full approach would be that financial stocks should now have room to recover, as the big shares look cheap by international standards and remain exposed - despite increasing competition - to a strong home market. However, with interest rate increases in the US and Europe - and possibly in Britain too - in prospect, there appears no prospect of an early recovery in the overall performance of Irish stocks.

Brokers both at home and abroad continue to argue that many of the Irish shares are good value at current levels in comparison to their international peers - for instance, Merrill Lynch and Dolmen Butler Briscoe both rate Irish Life & Permanent a strong buy in a recent note.

But in the current environment don't bet on an early recovery in prices and be prepared for further weakness.