KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand sharemarket closed a fairly lacklustre session lower with top stock Telecom among the losers.
The benchmark NZSX-50 index closed down 25.307 points at 3348.141. There were 65 falls and 36 rises.
Volume was worth $139.79 million but about $45m of it was attributed to two large trades in Australian bank shares listed here and there was also good volume in Telecom. Telecom fell 7c to 312.
Fletcher Building was the star, rising 20c to 760. The company's management is well regarded and the stock has experienced renewed interest after being sold.
"The day was characterised by Fletcher Building's very sound performance, which is just a good vote in favour of that particular stock," said Barry Lindsay, First NZ Capital's research manager.
There were few catalysts for trading on the day and the focus is turning to next week's monetary policy statement because if interest rates are cut it is likely to inject some life into the sharemarket.
The plunge in the New Zealand dollar was a positive factor yesterday for exporters but today the currency consolidated.
F&P Appliances eased 7c to 182 and F&P Healthcare slipped 7c to 324.
Contact Energy was down 1c at 835.
Cavalier rose 10c to 300 and Hallenstein Glasson rose 1c to 299. SkyCity rose 11c to 371 and Sanford rose 10c to 610. NZX rose 11c to 697.
Tourism Holdings fell 6c to 140 and The Warehouse fell 4c to 331. Rakon eased 4c to 290. Port of Tauranga eased 15c to 695.
In the US the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq fell, but the Dow Jones industrial average eked out a modest gain, helped by Home Depot.
The home improvement retailers' shares rose 4.5 per cent after its chief executive said the battered US housing market's decline may be nearing an end.
And General Motors Corp, another Dow component, said it thinks it has seen the bottom of the downturn in the auto industry.
The Dow rose 0.14 per cent to 11,532.88, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 0.20 per cent to 1274.99. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 0.66 per cent at 2333.73.
- NZPA
