Air NZ climbs but NZ market flat

The New Zealand sharemarket was little changed today even though Wall Street had a strong finish on Friday.

Risk appetite dissipated on markets after eurozone nations agreed on Sunday to offer loans to Greece if it asked for the money.

The benchmark NZX-50 index closed up 3.895 points, or 0.118 per cent, at 3314.142. Turnover was worth $54.8 million. There were 44 rises and 32 falls among the 113 stocks traded.

"It is a bit disappointing on the back of Friday night markets being quite buoyant. I thought we might have followed them today," said Stuart Hardie, adviser at Craigs Investment Partners.

OceanaGold rose 9c to 349 after an upbeat statement about investigation of gold deposits near its existing Reefton mine.

Air NZ rose a cent to 146 to a new two-year high. Tourism NZ said today it was working with Air NZ on another round of the New Zealand Big Shout campaign in Australia.

NZOG rose 1c to 163 on a day it was reported that the Hoki-1 exploration well was drilling ahead.

Telecom, which today flagged the departure of senior executive Matt Crockett, eased a cent to 220. Contact Energy rose 2c to 643 and Fletcher Building eased 5c to 833.

Nuplex, which went ex-dividend today, fell 2c to 347.

Pike River Coal, which had a strong run last week, fell a cent to 115.

Port of Tauranga, which has the largest container ship to regularly call at New Zealand berthed at its port, eased 4c to 696.

NZAX-listed A2 Corp rose 0.1c to 8c after saying it was in talks with Freedom Nutritional Products Ltd.

Methven fell 2c to 158, Tourism Holdings eased 4c to 696 and Ebos fell 1c to 644. SkyTV fell 5c to 520 and Mainfreight fell 1c to 650.

In the United States on Friday (local time) the Dow Jones industrial average topped 11,000 at one stage for the first time in a year-and-a-half after Chevron's upbeat outlook, and wholesale inventories data reinforced bets on an improving economy.

Data showed US wholesale inventories rose more than expected in February and sales at wholesalers reached their highest level in 16 months.

The Dow gained 0.6 per cent to end at 10,997.35, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 0.7 per cent to 1194.37, and the Nasdaq Composite Index added 0.7 per cent to 2454.05.

IG Markets said that heading into US earnings season, expectations were for a pretty decent performance with analysts looking for earnings per share growth of more than 30 per cent.

With the S&P 500 index trading on 19 times earnings, it would have to be a stellar earnings season to justify the current optimism. "Perhaps the market is priced for perfection," IG Markets said.

- NZPA