Liams Last Post: a Good Friday ruined by Elan and US profit taking...

Good Afternoon ,

 

First pleasant Friday until wall street gave away its gains , was he first in a while… this volatility seems set to continue….If you you are an ELAN holder your afternoon was ruined with the news of the increase of PML cases to 23 from 13 has been met with a sharp negative response with the share price down by -20%.

 

The Irish banks finally began to find some support today having initially been down in excess of 3% , the afternoon saw some light relief and a bit if support coming through. At the close of business the share of AIB were +0.4% and Bank of Ireland flat on the day.

 

CRH continues to struggle and fell below the eur 19.00 level . Getting very much back in Buying territory from here.  It has bothe Defensive qualities given its underperformance and also offensive qualities given the operational leverage and balance sheet strength.

 

The UK housebuilders continue to struggle … after their strong run, more sector rotation and fears for a more difficult 2010 coming into play.

 

 Grafton which I have to say I beloeve was ambushed yesterday , being hit lower on really low volume recovered +4.7% today to trade at 4.58 at the close.

 

I got a fright when I saw that ICON plc was down -8% …. Only to find the volume a total of one share , yes one…. The ADR was up a further 0.77%

 

The food stocks in vogue for the last few days continue their relative strength.

 

 Wall Street down  -0.99% at 4.30pm , has brought about an afternoon when the hard won gains of the morning were conceded across Europe. The Stoxx50 index -0.5% , the FTSE though doggedly remaining in positive territory led by a rebound in basic materials +2.8% and helped by technology after the Microsoft numbers. Telcos's which had been one of the leading sectors of the past few days traded places with the materials for underperformance and lost -1.5%.

The underperforming sectors in the US are the Basic materials -2.3% , the oils -1.5% and industrials -1.4% which helped drag the entire index down by about -1%

 

 In terms of the Economic stats , the key numbers out of the US today was the Existig home sales numbers at 5.57m vs a survey of 5.37  , existing hoe sales month on month were up +9.4% vs expectations of +4.9%.

 

A sobering thought is the story on Bloomberg that Irish pub values have fallen by 40% … indeed

 

Have a good Bank Holiday Weekend.

 

Liam

 

 

 

___________________________________________

Liam Boggan

　

Merrion Stockbrokers

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