KEY POINTS:
The sharemarket bounced back from two days of heavy losses today, up a tepid 0.4 per cent.
The NZSX-50 benchmark index closed up 0.3 per cent or 13.61 points at 3939.73 on turnover totalling $92 million. The index has lost around 1 per cent in each of the last two sessions.
Today's trading was a respectable recovery which did not make up all the ground lost this week but was not bad ahead of Christmas, First NZ Securities broker Don Lewthwaite said.
"The way world markets are, buyers are pretty reticent and ...quite often people like to have a little bit in the tin heading into Christmas so there's a tendency to drift."
Telecom dominated, down 4c to 432 on a solid $36 million turnover. Sky City was next, up 3c to 455 after announcing a new ceo yesterday.
There were no true star performers, although The Warehouse managed to claw back 6c to 553 after a 73c, 12 per cent tumble yesterday.
Today the High Court granted the Commerce Commission an interim injunction banning takeover bids from Foodstuffs or Woolworths while the competition regulator appealed its decision.
"I guess people may have thought it was oversold," Mr Lewthwaite noted.
Contact Energy eased 4c to 806. while Fletcher Building, which has been volatile of late, recovered 9c to 1116.
Small stocks Diligent Board Member Services and Oceanagold had strong swings on low trading. Diligent gained 12c or 17 per cent to 80c after listing at $1 last week, while mining stock OceanaGold rose 30c or 11 per cent to 285.
NZ Farming Systems Uruguay fell 3c to 139, continuing its descent below its $1.50 per share listing yesterday.
Other moves included Nuplex up 8c to 678, Air NZ up 3c to 185, F&P Healthcare up 3c to 330, and GPG up 4c to 170.
Lion Nathan rose 30c to 1030, later announcing it had informal clearance to buy brewer James Boag from San Miguel Corp.
Australian telco Telstra was up 22c to 550.
Rises outnumbered falls today 66 to 35 on 142 stocks traded.
Australian shares rose 0.4 per cent on Wednesday, snapping a five-day decline, but banking stocks were sold down on concerns about lending to the battered property sector.
It was also a better day on Wall St, with investors buying beaten-down technology shares in the hope that the tech sector would weather the impact of the credit crisis.
Earlier, the market struggled to hold gains as Goldman Sachs Group Inc comments about its business outlook fuelled uncertainty about the impact of the housing slump on bank profits.
The Dow Jones industrial average advanced 65.27 points, or 0.50 per cent, to 13,232.47. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 9.08 points, or 0.63 per cent, to close at 1,454.98.
The Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 21.57 points, or 0.84 per cent, at 2,596.03, snapping a three-day losing streak.
- NZPA
