NZ sharemarket up 1.8 pct early

NZPA

Friday 12th August 2011

The New Zealand sharemarket rose strongly in early trade today, after stocks shot up 4 percent in the United States as bargain-hungry investors overcame the recent wave of fear that drove selling around the world during the past two weeks.

Around 10.15am the benchmark NZX-50 index was up 56.86 points or 1.8 percent to 3265.47. Yesterday the New Zealand market had shrugged off earlier sharp falls in the US and Europe to notch up a gain of nearly 25 points.

Early rises today included Mainfreight up 41c to 1018, Fletcher Building up 24c to 775, Trustpower up 18c to 715, Port of Tauranga up 14c to 920, Nuplex up 11c to 243, Steel & Tube up 10c to 250, Cavalier Corp up 10c to 350, Sky TV up 9c to 582, Sky City up 8c to 343, and NZ Refining Co up 8c to 330.

Kathmandu gained 7c to 208, Contact Energy lifted 7c to 500, The Warehouse was up 6c to 346, Ryman Healthcare added 6c to 264, Ebos Group lifted 6c to 666, and Telecom was up 5.5c to 255.

The few early falls included OceanaGold down 8c to 262, and fishing company Sanford down 7c to 510.

The rally in the latest session in the United States marked the second bounce in a yo-yo week, with the market showing some signs of regaining its footing.

"It's a bungee cord market. We've fallen off of a small bridge, the bungee cord bounced us up, and oscillations will diminish, but we're still bouncing around," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at DA Davidson & Co, in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Investors used results from Cisco and a slight dip in weekly US jobless claims as the catalyst to snap up beaten-down stocks. Worries about the spread of the European debt crisis were also somewhat alleviated after news of a planned meeting between France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel.

The Dow Jones industrial average surged 4 percent to 11,143.31, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index shot up 4.6 percent to 1172.64, and the Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 4.7 percent to close at 2492.68.

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