The main mover on the Irish market this morning is Elan, up 59 cents (+7.76%) at €8.19. This is in response to a stong close in Elan ADRs on the US market yesterday, boosted by a recommendation on the popular Motley Fool web site. Motley suggested that now could be a good time to get in to Elan, as the market may have over-reacted to recent bad news regarding Tysabri and Phase III testing for its Alzheimers drug.

There are three other pharma companies with an Alzheimers drug also at Phase III testing: Eli Lilly (LLY), Baxter International (BAX) and Medivation (MDVN). The smallest of these is Medivation with a market cap of only $672 million. So no shortage of bets available, for what would be a hugly lucrative drug given the ageing profile of the population, particularly in the US.

Also rising on the Irish market this morning is RyanAir, up 15 cents (+5.7%) at €2.78 in response to crude oil falling to below $114 a barrel.

Kerry Group (€19.65, -63 cents) has held up well in the bear market of the past 12 months, down only 15% from its high. It may actually benefit from the credit crunch. Kerry depends on acquisitions for growth, and the credit crunch should result in it having far fewer competing bids from private equity funds on any targets selected. H1 results are out on August 26th.

Smurfit Kappas sharp fall yesterday is being explained by some commentators as being due to it losing its place in a Morgan Stanley MSCI index. DCC are up 65 cents at €16.25 this morning on announcing an acquisition in the UK. Some analysts say that the break up value of the company (which has four seperate businesses) is far higher than the current share price.

On the US market, Apple overtook Google this week to be the most valuable company in Silicon Valley. Interesting comment on the CNBC web site from a commentator who expects this out-performance to continue, given that Google only has search advertising revenue compared to Apple’s range of products. Also, Apple’s recent distribution deal with Best Buy will add about 50% to its retail distribution capacity, which currently consists of 188 Apple stores. Both stocks trade on P/E s of about 34.

Consumer confidence figures out in the US later today will probably be poor – only question is, how poor will they be?

On the London market, mining company BHP Billiton (BLT) £15.48 (-35p) will have results out on Monday. Last time around it suprised on the upside. The mining sector pulled back a bit on profit taking in the past few months, but is once again gathering some momentum with takeover activity attracting investor interest.