NZ stocks: Market rallies after slow start to day

12.00pm

After a slow start the sharemarket had by late morning gained ground on Friday's trading.

At 11.30am, the benchmark NZSX50 gross index was up 8.75 points, 0.4 per cent, to 2181.22, while the NZSE40 capital index was up 6.32 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 2114.54.

Today was the first day of the NZX's new trading hours, 10am until 5pm. Previously it traded between 9am until 4pm.

Macquarie Equities broker David Cleal said the initial slide in the indices this morning could be pinned to market leader Telecom, which slumped 3c to 512.

However, by 11.30am, Telecom had rallied and was up 4c at 519, having traded $4.2 million on volume of 814,909.

At 11.30am, $55 million of shares had been traded on volume of 16.7 million. Among the 113 stocks traded were 43 rises and 33 falls.

By late morning, there was $10.6 million of Sky TV traded on turnover of 2.5 million, but its shares were down 4c to 435.

Stocks on the rise today were: Briscoe up 1c to 195, Carter Holt Harvey up 3c to 176, JPM Fleming up 10c to 1020, Fisher & Paykel Appliances up 19c to 1370, F&P Healthcare up 5c to 1205, Port of Tauranga up 5c to 435, Sky City up 5c to 929, TrustPower up 9c to 465, and Tranz Rail up 1c to 93.

On the slide were: AMP down 3 to 575, Contact Energy down 2c to 488, GRD Macraes down 5c to 121, Kirkaldie & Stains down 10c to 330, Ports of Auckland down 9c to 790, The Warehouse down 3c to 507, and Westpac down 9c to 1766.

In other markets, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 89.99 points to 8989.05, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index ended down 9.60 points at 976.22.

The tech-laced Nasdaq Composite Index lost 8.75 points to 1625.26.

- NZPA