LOW volume and the absence of a clear direction continued to plague the local stock market this week, even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor's 500 closed at successive all-time highs on Tuesday and Wednesday.

There were sporadic bursts of interest that helped inject some life into the market, but these were very isolated and limited to companies that made significant announcements. By and large, the departure of the retail investor in droves over the past six weeks - possibly because confidence has taken a hard knock following what has become known as the "penny stock saga" - and the draining of liquidity out of the local market that started six months ago because of US tapering fears seem to have knocked life out of the stock market.

This made for another largely featureless week, one in which dealers found themselves having to trade on their own in order to try and supplement declining incomes, or sit there and stare at the trading screen while waiting for inspiration that never came.