New Zealand shares snapped three days of falls as investors hunted yield in an uncertain global economy. Meridian Energy, MightyRiverPower and Kiwi Income Property Trust advanced.
The NZX 50 Index rose 16.981 points, or 0.3 percent, to 5162.872. Within the index, 25 stocks rose, 21 fell and four were unchanged. Turnover was $89.8 million.
Overnight Wall Street snapped its worst three day decline since 2011, fuelled by global uncertainty which saw the CBOE VIX Index, known as Wall Street's fear gauge, spike to its highest level since 2012. Poor economic data out of Germany has stoked concern Europe may slip back into recession, while last the week, the International Monetary Fund cut its global growth forecast for 2015 to 3.8 percent from 4 percent and warned geopolitical tensions posed a risk to "frothy" equity markets. Meanwhile, traders are waiting to see how markets will react once the US Federal Reserve ends its bond buying programme at the end of this month.
"The worm has slowly turned today to see prices improve. We've had a rebound today, offshore markets overnight were a little bit firmer and that's got the bargain hunters coming back into the local market," said Grant Williamson, director at Hamilton Hindin Greene.
"The index in the states which follows volatility is pretty high at the moment, and I don't see it stopping anytime soon. There's just such mixed signals, one minute the US is going up on good economic data, the next minute it's going down on negative news. "
