Modest early gain by NZ sharemarket

Wednesday 6th July 2011

The New Zealand sharemarket made modest early gains, as Xero pulled back from yesterday's seven month low with a 3 percent early gain.

Around 10.25am the benchmark NZX-50 index was up 2.34 points to 3475.93, having lost 4.9 points yesterday.

Xero gained 6c early to 210, OceanaGold lifted 7c to 335, Hallenstein Glasson added 5c to 369, Mainfreight lifted 5c to 1040, Contact Energy added 3c to 538, and Telecom edged up 0.5c to 250.5.

Guinness Peat Group lost 10.3c to 80, after announcing a reduction of share capital was in effect. Vector fell 4c early to 255, Ebos Group lost 4c to 695, and Fletcher Building was down 1c to 855.

In the United States, stocks ended a thinly traded session mostly flat as investors paused after last week's surge.

"It's no real surprise that the market is having a harder time today getting excited, given the big week we just had," said Hayes Miller, the Boston-based head of asset allocation in North America at Baring Asset Management.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.1 percent at 12,569.87, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 0.1 percent at 1337.88, while the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 0.4 percent at 2825.77.

NZPA

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