NZ stocks: Winning streak ends in busy day

The sharemarket ended a four-day winning streak yesterday on heavy turnover, as institutional investors made final adjustments to their portfolios before the re-weighting of the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) index on Monday.

The NZSE-40 index closed down 3.76 points at 2072.36, on turnover worth $152 million.

Fund managers use the popular MSCI equity indexes to track their share portfolios.

DF Mainland dealer Greg Arnott said the MSCI buying made it hard to put a finger on an overall tone for the market.

"With MSCI buying going on, we are seeing things happening that aren't the usual sort of pattern in the market," he said.

"You can see a stock at $1 and then suddenly it's at $1.20 on nothing, just on heavy buying for MSCI loading," he said.

Market leader Telecom closed down 4c at $5.08 after touching a three-month high of $5.15 earlier in the day.

The stock goes ex a 5c dividend on Monday.

Discount retail giant The Warehouse closed up a cent at $6.85 - equal to the stock's top price - after chief executive Greg Muir told investors at the company's annual meeting he remained optimistic about likely Christmas sales, particularly with the country's agricultural and dairy sectors still performing well.

The terrorist attacks in the United States had a dramatic instant impact, Mr Muir said, but sales recovered within days.

Warehouse shares have climbed from $5.30 on July 31.

Mr Arnott said reports in recent days from Australian retailers Coles Myer, David Jones and Woolworths that the retail outlook for Christmas looked strong, had also helped the stock.

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare continued to be keenly sought, closing up 69c at $18.30. Its poor cousin, Fisher & Paykel Appliances ended up 25c at $9.50.

Credit services company Baycorp closed up 20c at $11.10 before its merger with Australia's Data Advantage. The company goes ex a 27c dividend on Monday.

"There is a lot of trading going on between Data Advantage and Baycorp on the arbitrage situation," Mr Arnott said.

Carter Holt Harvey fell 2c to $1.74, and Brierley fell 4c to 27c.

Air NZ A shares lost a cent to 32c and B shares were down 2c to 33c after the company named Wrightson chairman John Palmer as chairman to take over from acting chairman Jim Farmer.

Independent News Ltd was down 5c at 360.

NZ Oil and Gas rose 1c to 37c after announcing a distribution of shares in its Australian subsidiary Pan Pacific Petroleum to shareholders.

- NZPA