The ISEQ index of Irish shares finished at 5,295.66 in Dublin this afternoon, up 64.92 or 1.24 per cent.
The index ending in positive territory doesn’t reflect the volatility of the days trading with many shares changing hands at prices across an 8 per cent spread on the day. Although profit taking before this evenings close of the half year of trading contributed, traders said there didn’t seem to be any clear reason for the turbulence.
Fortunes were extremely mixed in the banking sector which make up about half of the ISEQ’s value. Over 4 million AIB shares were traded as it ended the day up 5.25 per cent to €10.00 but earlier in the session it had been off about 2 per cent. The banking stock that suffered most was Irish Life and Permanent which closed at €7.37, a drop of 7.3 per cent.
There was decent volumes traded in Kingspan as it gained 6.37 per cent to €6.35. That was an impressive rally as during mid-morning it had been trading at €5.98, just a cent up from its opening.
Although the company’s chief operating officer Gavin O’Reilly was in the market for 25,000 shares of Independent News and Media it did nothing to hold up the share price. The media group ended the day at €1.52, down 5.47 per cent.
For a change the Irish market fared much better than those in Europe and the US which continued their relentless slide. The only exception was in London where the FTSE 100 finished at 5529.9 up 11.7.
Shares in the US were down sharply as oil hit a high of $142 a barrel and worries about further credit losses by US banks shook confidence.
Reuters reported that the Dow was on the cusp of entering a bear market for the first time since 2001.