Early buoyancy gives way to flat market finish

File photo / NZ Herald

The New Zealand sharemarket returned from the Easter long weekend to a little buoyancy in early trading to reach 3496.228 points just before lunch - the highest level in nearly three years - but then came off the boil.

Despite having closed up 19.6 points last Thursday, the NZX50 benchmark index fell sharply in a few minutes from 11.30am and dipped several more times to finish down 5.913 points on last Thursday, at 3486.483, a fall of 0.169 per cent.

A total of 24.3 million shares, valued at $66.65 million, changed hands, with 31 rises and 36 falls among the 111 stocks traded.

Sky City finished down 1c at $3.45, Abano Healthcare slipped 2c to $4.52, while Tower gained 4c to $1.89 and Hallenstein Glasson jumped 1.76 per cent, by 7c to $4.05.

Among leading stocks, Fletcher Building rose 3c in early trade but finished down 2c at $9.19, and Contact Energy finished unchanged at $5.86.

Shares in NZ Farming Systems Uruguay (NZFSU) were untraded early after Olam International said it was seeking to buy the 22 per cent of NZFSU it did not already own at 70c a share. But it finished the day up 27 per cent, by 15c to 70c, from last week's 55c, after a minority shareholder complained the latest offer was not high enough. There were five small trades totalling 83,000 shares.

Trading on the Australian stock market is tipped to open flat today and should stay that way if inflation figures are within official targets.

Commsec chief economist Craig James predicted underlying inflation of about 0.6-0.7 per cent for the March quarter, with the economy on track to record annual inflation at the lower end of the 2-3 per cent target.

Wall Street was mixed on Thursday and Monday. About 5.4 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, below the daily average of 7.74 billion.

Kimberly-Clark cut the low end of its full-year outlook because the costs of pulp and other goods rose more than twice as much as it had expected.

This week 180 S&P 500 companies are set to report, including Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 0.2 per cent to end at 12,479.88, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index shed 0.2 per cent to 1335.25, while the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.2 per cent to close at 2825.88.

- NZPA