Sharemarket begins new year with confident air

File photo / NZ Herald

New Zealand's main sharemarket index lifted on the first day of trading for 2011, spiking over 30 points or nearly 1 per cent at mid-afternoon, and finished confidently, up 15.96 points at the end of the day.

The NZX-50 index finished at 3324.99, a slight improvement on its last day of trading on New Year's Eve, when a fall of 25 points left the index with a overall gain for the year of about 2.7 per cent.

There were 49 rises and 40 falls among the 103 stocks traded across the whole market. The 13.8 million shares traded were valued at $27.1 million.

One of the best performers in yesterday's thin trade was Fletcher Building, which jumped 1.7 per cent, by 13c to $7.79, as more than a million shares changed hands.

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare climbed 2.57 per cent, by 8c to $3.19, on much smaller parcels of shares.

Casino operator SkyCity rose 4c in early trade and kept rising to finish the day up 6c at $3.30, Auckland Airport lifted 4c to $2.22, and cornerstone stock Telecom was steady at $2.17 as 2.5 million of its shares were sold.

Several banks showed marked falls, with ANZ Bank Group down 2.26 per cent, by 70c to $30.30, and Westpac down 1.69 per cent by 50c to $29.

Fewer than 300,000 Warehouse shares were sold, but the price dropped 2.29 per cent by 8c to $3.42.

In the United States, falls in oil and metal prices dragged down energy and materials shares, while concern about lower supermarket profits hit consumer stocks.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 20 points to 11,691. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dipped 1.67 points to 1270. The Nasdaq Composite Index was off 10 points, or 0.38 per cent, to 2681.

Newmont Mining fell 3.3 per cent as gold fell the most in six months and shares of grocer Supervalu fell nearly 7 per cent after Morgan Stanley told investors to slash holdings in the stock.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost 27.6 points to 4714.9 as lower commodities prices hit resource-related shares.

- NZPA