NZ market starts week in negative territory

The New Zealand sharemarket's new year rally took another knock today following on from a weak United States market performance on Friday and ahead of some key economic data in New Zealand this week.

The benchmark NZSX-50 index closed down 10.848 points, or 0.333 per cent, at 3247.104, having opened down 9.11 points. Turnover was worth $51.94 million. There were 36 rises and 39 falls among the 120 stocks traded.

Stocks slid in the US on Friday (local time) following a report from bank JPMorgan Chase & Co of deep fourth-quarter loan losses and US markets are closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday.

The focus locally is shifting to the profit reporting season in February as well as consumer price index data on Wednesday and retail sales data on Thursday.

Profit-taking on a new year rally helped push Fletcher Building down 20c to 811 and Contact Energy down 8c to 610.

Australia's Spotless Group was untraded on its first day on the local market as a dual listed stock. The listing reflects the company's commitment to this country but brokers said investors were more attracted to the liquidity in the stock in the Australian listing.

Pyne Gould Corp fell a cent to 48 and its entry into the NZSX-50 index was effective today. NZ Farming Systems Uruguay rose 1c to 47 on light volume.

NZ Refining rose 16c to 392, again on light volume, and Pike River Coal was unchanged at 102.

Oceania Gold rose 4c to 239 after increasing its reserve estimate at the Macraes mine in Otago.

GPG rose 2c to 90 and Cavalier Carpets rose 5c to 275.

Financial stocks were firm with AMP up 8c to 818, Westpac up 64c to 3210 and ANZ up 88c to 2860.

Sanford rose 5c to 485 on light volume and Rakon rose 1c to 114.

TrustPower was unchanged at 726 as was SkyCity at 332.

Telecom rose 1c to 252 and Freightways rose 1c to 341.

SkyTV eased 2c to 515. Auckland Airport eased 1c to 191 and Air NZ eased 2c to 116. Tower eased 9c to 207 and The Warehouse eased 4c to 398.

In the US, JPMorgan Chase's loan losses raised concerns about bank profits, while weaker-than-expected results from a consumer survey increased unease about incomes and unemployment.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 0.9 per cent to 10,609.65, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 1.1 per cent to 1136.03, and the Nasdaq Composite Index lost 1.2 per cent to 2287.99.

For the week, the Dow ended down 0.1 per cent, the S&P fell 0.8 per cent and the Nasdaq fell 1.3 per cent.

- NZPA