NZ sharemarket opens positively following yesterday's jolt

By NZPA

Thursday 1st March 2007

The sharemarket opened positively this morning following yesterday's jolt precipitated by a 9% slump on the Shanghai market on Tuesday.

The local market took some comfort from Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average index close up 48.15 points, or 0.39%, at 12,264.39 and the Nasdaq unofficially closed up 7.69 points, or 0.32%, at 2415.55.

In the wake of the Chinese market slump, the Dow industrials' on Tuesday suffered its worst slide since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The New Zealand benchmark index, the NZSX-50, was up 10.25 points, 0.25%, to 4047.38 at 10.05am but 15 minutes later had lost momentum and was only up 0.11 to 4037.24.

Yesterday, it ended 1.5% lower, although at one stage it was down 3.3%.

Market leader Telecom was steady on $4.82. Yesterday it lost 7c, having rebounded from an 18c slide.

Fletcher Building recovered 3c of yesterday's 18c loss to be on $10.65 and Contact Energy picked up 4c of its 23c loss to be on $8.90.

Casino operator Sky City, which yesterday picked a bad day to announce a disappointing result, recovered 5c of its 23c loss to be on $4.90.

However Port of Tauranga, which had a volatile day yesterday, fell another 7c to $6.03 today.

Some Australian stocks remained under pressure. Westpac was down 15c to 2850 and AMP 28c to $11.52.

The Warehouse was up 3c to $3.00.

Air NZ, which yesterday went strongly against the market in the wake of Tuesday's strong half year profit, eased 2c to $2.32.

Wall Street got reassurance from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who told investors the US economy was set to grow moderately.

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