NZ stocks: Market tentative after week's early high

12:00 pm

The sharemarket was looking for direction this morning after breaking the 2000-point barrier on the NZSE-40 briefly yesterday.

Total turnover was a quiet $13.5 million at 11am today, and the NZSE-40 capital index was down nearly 11 points to 1983.9.

Brokers noted a late rally on the Dow, and profit-taking on certain well performing shares.

"A lot of the stocks, like Steel and Tube, that have a very, very good run over the last week to 10 days, are just pulling back a little bit," DF Mainland broker Sam McDonald said.

Steel and Tube was down 2c to 270, while another recent market darling, Auckland Airport, eased 5c to 355 as it announced a landing fees deal with Air New Zealand.

Fisher & Paykel was unchanged at $14.40 but topped the turnover by value at $3 million. Australian telco Telstra was untraded while takeover targets Contact and Frucor both eased, Contact by 3c to 406 and Frucor by 1c to 242.

"Everyone is still a little bit puzzled there," Mr McDonald said of Contact.

"We're just trying to work out what's going to happen. The bigger institutions have scared the market a little bit as far as their game plan."

Other stocks to move included Baycorp down 5c to 1180, Carter Holt Harvey, up 1c to 145, Warehouse down 9c to 659 and market leader Telecom down 3c to 463. Independent News fell 22c to 355 and one of its interests, Sky TV was down 5c to 365, as the news company announced at its AGM yesterday that it had registered no downturn in advertising from the September 11 attacks.

So far there have been 23 rises and 32 falls on 99 stocks traded.

- NZPA