KEY POINTS:
Deepening recession fears in the US gave the New Zealand and other sharemarkets a hiding today, the local bourse falling for a tenth consecutive session.
The benchmark NZSX-50 index slumped 1.5 percent or 58.1 points to 3752.38 on sluggish turnover worth $89 million.
The sharemarket has not had 10 straight declines since December 2000, when calculations for the index began.
Markets across Asia were thrashed after the Dow Jones index fell 1.6 percent last night in response to poor December retail sales and a $US18 billion writedown from Citigroup overnight.
The ASX/S&P index was down 2.6 percent in mid-afternoon trading, while Hong Kong's bourse tumbled 4 percent and Japan's Nikkei lost nearly 1 percent.
ASB Securities broker Stephen Wright said the market "is weak ... and it is difficult to see where it is going to end".
On top of global growth concerns, he said investors were aware of New Zealand's rising inflation, with the latest consumer price index figures out on tomorrow.
But on the positive side, Mr Wright noted that market turnover was low.
"It's reasonably safe to say there's certainly nowhere near the panic selling of old and if anything our clients tend to do nothing.
They don't panic sell but on the other hand, they don't buy either."
Almost every stock on the NZSX-50 was down, including Telecom down 4c to 414, Contact down 7c to 797 and Fletcher Building down 26c to 1030.
Fletcher Building touched a year low of 1014 during the session and has lost 7 percent since the start of the year but analysts said this was largely due to general market sentiment.
Lack of liquidity meant some big swings in some stocks.
Trustpower lost 25c to 750, Fisher & Paykel Appliances lost 12c to 288 and its healthcare twin was down 5c to 332.
There were virtually no rises today except for Mainfreight, up 7c to 595, Sky TV up 5c to 547 and Tourism Holdings up 2c to 215.
Westpac fell 48c to 2882 and AMP was down 55c to 975 as Australian banking stocks were particularly hard hit by the steeper-than-expected Citigroup result.
All three major US stock indexes plunged more than 2 percent on Tuesday after a record loss at Citigroup Inc and the worst showing for retailers in five years fuelled fears that the economy was heading into a recession.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 277.04 points, or 2.17 percent, to close at 12,501.11, to its worst level since April. All 30 Dow components ended the day in the red.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index ended down 35.30 points, or 2.49 percent, at 1380.95. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 60.71 points, or 2.45 percent, to close at 2417.59.
-NZPA
