Liams Last Post : Markets continue to rally, European earings season ok , Irish Life rallies on bid rumours

Good Afternoon ,

 

Markets continue to be put the Greece fears into the background and had another good day though on light volumes. Long only institutional activity is particularly quiet across the board and it is worrying. 

 

Not much corporate news in Ireland today , there was some newspaper articles about NAMA and suggesting that the First loans will be ready to be transferred to NAMA by February 26th. Some financial institutions seemed to be reckless in the extreme with rumours of Irish Nationwide rumoured to be about to receive haircuts of up to 50%.  If the overall discount for the sector remains at about 30% , this could be positive for Bank of Ireland. The valuations of the rump (Irish Operations) of AIB is now below the levels that it bottomed previously at in February 2009 so the market is not exactly rushing to come to any optimistic views...

 

The defensive food stock names in Ireland were the underperformers today as attention swung back to the cyclicals. 

 

My friends in Kepler equities commented on 37 European companies today and of those comments 31 were positive comments which gives a good indication of how the underlying company newsflow is positive as we get into the earnings reporting season. 

 

The Greek Government is rumoured to be about to try and tap the markets maybe as soon as next week.  March 1th is the key date for the markets as it is the date by which the Greek Government reports to the EU on its plans for getting the economy into shape.  I suspect that as we get closer to this date the volatility will increase again.

 

Irish Life was up by 4.7% today after a story in the Daily Telegraph sugested that the Resolution group may be looking at Irish Life. The story pooh poohed the rumours but Resolution may be interested afte rall the group is trading at a very large discount to our estimate of the value. Lets watch and wait.

 

Origin started to move belatedly today after a few days of strong performance by K&S an the fertiliser companies on expectations of higher fertiliser prices and sector consolidation.

 

 

At 5pm , the Dow Jones is up +0.17% , the Eurostxx50 is up +0.58% , the FTSE is up +0.9% and Ireland was up +0.6%

 

Have a good evening.

 

Liam

 

 

 

 

___________________________________________

Liam Boggan

　

Merrion Stockbrokers

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