Markets: Warehouse star performer

File photo / NZ Herald

Retailer The Warehouse was a standout performer on the New Zealand sharemarket, ending up nearly 3.7 per cent as the market had a solid day.

A 14c gain took The Warehouse to 397, while Ebos Group gained 10c to 690, Contact Energy was up 8c to 578, and Sky City lifted 7c to 292.

Bryon Burke of Craigs Investment Partners said the market had been fairly quiet, which he attributed to the school holidays in this country, and a public holiday in Sydney although the Australian market was open.

"Certainly a positive bias to the market in general", but no stock specific news in the market, Mr Burke said.

Some positive news for the economy was confirmed with publication of the ANZ commodity price index in mid-afternoon.

The index was up 2.9 per cent in September, the first lift in four months, to be less than 1 per cent below the all time high recorded in May. Wool prices rose 12 per cent to a 14-year high.

On the sharemarket, the benchmark NZX-50 index ended the day up 15.98 points to 3228.92. Rises exceeded falls by 45 to 33 out of the 106 stocks traded, with turnover of $49.3 million.

Trustpower added 5c to 740, Pike River Coal gained 3c to 113, Property for Industry was up 3c to 119, Steel & Tube lifted 2c to 251, Fletcher Building added 2c to 818, and Telecom edged up 1c to 205.

Stocks losing ground today included Cavalier Corp down 14c to 295, Hellaby Holdings down 6c to 190, Mainfreight down 5c to 700, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare fell 3c to 304, and Nuplex dropped 3c to 323.

Mr Burke said the declines for Nuplex and Healthcare may have been related to the strength of the New Zealand dollar, which spiked to a 10-month high against the greenback around US74.60c early on Saturday, and was still around US74.25c at 5pm today.

- NZPA