With international markets continuing their strong recovery after last week's heavy selling, the Irish market put in a strong performance. It gained almost 2 per cent with solid gains across the spectrum. The main highlight was some extraordinary trading by Fyffes after the share was the focus of bullish comments from two tipsheets.

Essentially what Techinvest and Citywire said about Fyffes was that the company's business was covered in the existing share price and that investors who bought Fyffes now were getting free entry to Fyffes' worldoffruit.com Internet portal business for the fresh produce industry, a venture that the tipsheets said could transform Fyffes.

This is no more than this column has said on a number of occasions in the past few weeks, but it was enough to trigger some active buying of Fyffes' shares in London and Dublin. On the home market, the shares soared in early trading from the overnight €1.95 to the sterling equivalent of €2.50 before falling back to a close of €2.25, adding 28 cents on the day. In London, Fyffes was 23p higher on £1.45 sterling.

Among the leaders, AIB gained 25 cents to €11.20. Bank of Ireland had a more modest 10 cents gain to €7.75 (£6.10), although Irish Life & Permanent was the best of the financials, with a 55 cents rise to €10.00.

Solid trading reports from some of its competitors helped CRH jump 30 cents to €21.40 (£16.85), while Smurfit continued its impressive newyear run with an eight cents gain to €3.20. Second-liners to show good gains included IAWS - up 20 cents to €5.00, Independent - up 10 cents to €6.30 and United Drug - up 35 cents to €7.50. Among the explorers, Bula was 3/4 of a cent higher on 7 3/4 cents, while Ovoca gained seven cents to 35 cents.