Iseq: 2,583.40 (–2.86) Settlement date: November 2nd

THE BOND market dominated the talk among Dublin stockbrokers after the yield on Ireland’s 10-year bonds reached 706 basis points yesterday morning.

However, following a Bloomberg report that the European Central Bank were buying up Irish Government debt the situation improved, with one broker noting that the move had “clearly had the desired effect” as seen by the tightening of 10-year debt by 24 basis points from its peak earlier in the day.

Pressures on Irish Government bonds was reflected in pressure on the main banks, with AIB closing down by 5.3 per cent at €0.34 and Bank of Ireland closing at €0.54, down by 6.1 per cent.

The exception was Irish Life and Permanent which closed up by 0.7 per cent at €1.54.

Elsewhere there was a mixed bag. Those with the heaviest relative volume in stocks ended the day in negative territory. Independent News and Media was under particular pressure, finishing at € 0.61, down 2.5 per cent, on volumes of more than one million.

Conversely positive movements were based on relatively weak volumes, which one broker put down to the midterm in the UK and Ireland.

In keeping with this trend CRH closed at €12.45, up by 1.22 per cent but this was based on volumes of 523,000.

It was a similar scenario for Smurfit Kappa, which finished at €7.71, up by just under 1 per cent on volumes of 282,000.

Ryanair remained unchanged, finishing at €4.20, up just 0.2 per cent, ahead of results which are to be announced next week.

Grafton was down by under 3 per cent, closing at €3.05, although brokers were at a loss to explain this dip and were not keen to link it to negative house price data released in the UK earlier in the day.