NZ sharemarket opens flat

By NZPA

Wednesday 11th April 2007

The sharemarket continued to ignore Wall Street's bull run, preferring to maintain its sideways stroll in early business today.

The benchmark NZSX-50 index was off 1.48 points to 4178.69 at 10.15am.

Local sentiment was dampened by yesterday's Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion which showed lower confidence but greater inflationary pressure.

Analysts said it will increase pressure on the Reserve Bank to hike interest rates once or twice over the next couple of months.

Market leader Telecom continued to track down, easing 2c to $4.73 after losing 5c yesterday.

The No 2 and three stocks, Contact Energy and Fletcher Building, were both unchanged, on $9.27 and $11.50 respectively.

The Warehouse rose 5c to $7.05, underpinned by strong interest in Coles across the Tasman.

Trustpower was up 8c to $8.50, while Rakon was down 5c to $4.85, but there were few other moves of note.

Rubicon was up 3c to $1.00.

There was good turnover in Sky City, which was up 2c to $4.73.

On Wall Street, the Dow industrials rose for an eighth straight session, the longest winning streak in four years, as a rebound in oil prices lifted energy shares and Citigroup gained on expectations of big job cuts.

Reports that Citigroup Inc. will cut at least 15,000 jobs lifted the No 1 US bank's shares 1.6%, supporting the Dow and S&P indexes.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 4.71 points, or 0.04%, to end at 12,573.85. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 3.78 points, or 0.26%, to 1448.39. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 8.43 points, or 0.34%, to 2477.61.

The major US indexes have retraced most of their losses from late February.

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