Market close: Shares close lower

Thursday 18th September 2008

The sharemarket dropped today with the NZSE50 down -3.39% to end the day at 3,158.

Teh top three continued to drop, with top stock Telecom shedding 2.9%, Fletcher Building dropping 4.4%, and Contact Energy lost 1.7%.

In the retail space following on from yesterday, Pumpkin Patch plunged 5.5%,The Warehouse Group lost 4.1%, and Michael Hill declined 3.9%. Hallenstein Glasson closed unchanged.

Other major losers included L & M Petroleum and Glass Earth Gold both down 16.67%, ProvencoCadmus down 12.28%, Pike River Coal lost 11.11%, Ryman Healthcare down 10.11%, PGG Wrightson down 9.09%, Pan Pacific Petroleum down 8%. Also down were, Steel & Tube Holdings 6.8%, Rakon 7.6%, Cavalier 6.5%, NZX 7.1%, Tower 6.2%, and Vector 5.8%.

Banks were down with Westpac losing 6.6% and ANZ down nearly 8%.

A few managed gains including Postie Plus Group up 20%, Heritage Gold up 4.35% and APN News and Media edged up 0.26%.

OceanaGold operator of New Zealand's biggest gold mine, ended the day up 11.11% on the NZX as a weakened global finance industry spurred demand for the precious metal as a haven.

Hanover's shareholders Eric Watson and Mark Hotchin also announcing today they are planning to inject up to $96 million of capital into the business as part of a restructuring plan.

At the close, the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index was down 2.4%, or 114.9 points, to 4607.3, after dropping by more than 4% intra-day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 449.36 points, or 4.06%, to settle at 10,609.66. The Nasdaq composite nose-dived 109.05 points, or 4.94%, to 2,098.85, and the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 57.2 points, or 4.71%, to a close at 1,156.39.

NZ Top 50	3,158.920	-111.010 (-3.39%)
ASX 200	4,607.300	-114.900 (-2.43%)
Dow	10,609.66	-449.36 (-4.06%)
Nasdaq	2,098.85	-109.05 (-4.94%)
FTSE 100	4,912.40	-291.80 (-5.61%)

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