KEY POINTS:
The sharemarket slipped in early trade and kept sliding gently through the first day's trading for 2008, as record high oil prices and weak US economic data battered Wall Street.
Shortly after opening following the two-day New Year's holiday, the NZSX-50 index fell 5.8 points, then fell again in the afternoon to finish the day 7.45 points down at 4033.93 - 0.18 per cent lower than at the end of 2007.
This was nothing to write home about considering it finished 2007 at 4041 points, 300 points shy of its record high in May, and down 0.3 per cent for the year - one of the world's 10 worst-performed benchmark indices.
Abano Healthcare jumped from its 6 1/2-year high of $5.09, lifting 1c in very thin volume, though one parcel of 1000 shares sold at $5.13 ahead of yesterday's announcement that directors are rejecting a $5.20 a share takeover offer from Crescent Capital Partners.
An independent adviser put a valuation range of $5.15 to $5.90, with a mid-point of $5.52, on the company.
There were about 25 rises and 53 falls among the 117 shares traded. The top volume traded, 7.6 million Telecom shares valued at $33.1 million, saw a 1c fall in the telco's value to $4.34 a share.
Fletcher Building was down 10c in early trading at $11.40, but returned to $11.50 with a big sale of 219,039 shares. The total trade of 560,000 shares in this company notched up the second largest traded value - $6.44 million.
Contact Energy put on a healthy 18c to $8.42.
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare fell 4c to $3.45 as $1.22 million worth of shares were traded.
Relatively large numbers of ICPbio shares (2.07 million) and warrants (1.9 million) changed hands, with a drop in value of 0.6c to 4.1c for the shares.
Freightways slumped 9c to $3.65, Kiwi Income Property Trust fell 2c to $1.32, and Ryman Healthcare was down 3c at $2.03.
Among the top-50 stocks, Rakon was up 4c at $3.97, Air New Zealand was steady at $1.88, and Vector rose 6c to $2.26.
Hallenstein Glasson fell 4c in early trade but finished the day up 2c at $3.92.
Rural services company PGG Wrightson lifted 1c to $2.22 after announcing a 2.5 million on-market share buyback for its chief executive's share incentive scheme.
SkyCity slipped 6c to $4.54, but the Warehouse rose 6c to $5.76.
Guinness Peat Group shed 4c to $1.70, and Charlie's edged down 0.5c to 17c.
- NZPA
