NZ stocks: Shares fall across board

12.20 pm

A rough night on Wall Street shaved another 2 per cent off the New Zealand sharemarket this morning and shares fell across the board.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 4.3 per cent or 382.92 points to 8,376.2, among its 10 biggest point losses in history.

Market jitters following last week's terrorist attacks in the US have wiped more than 1200 points off the Dow this week, or 12.8 percent of its value, and brokers here said it was inevitable New Zealand and other markets would follow.

"A hit on the Dow Jones like that is too big to ignore," said DF Mainland broker Greg Arnott.

Just after 11am the NZSE-40 was down 38.23 points to 1779.96 on turnover of $38.5 million.

The market was led down by benchmark stock Telecom which dropped 9c to 441 on the back of trading worth $17.2 million.

Australian-based telco Telstra also fell 10c to 640 despite a good run this week, although brokers speculated that investors would view telecommunications stocks globally as a safe haven.

Other stocks like to benefit from the current uncertainty included healthcare and food stocks, Mr Arnott said.

But there were virtually no stocks on the rise this morning: Warehouse fell 10c to 582, Contact Energy was down 4c to 326, Sky City was down 16c to 1045, and recent market darling Baycorp fell 75c to 960.

Baycorp has been sliding since last week and is now just 10c of its year low. Brokers believed this was because of a lack of buyers in the market generally, and because Baycorp's price-to-earnings ratio was very high, making it difficult to see where growth could come from in the current climate.

Air NZ shares continued their rocky journey, with A shares steady and B shares down 1c to 29. Mr Arnott said like others, he had been avoiding the airline for healthier stocks. "They've got their work cut out for them," he said.

Other moves included Auckland Airport off 6c to 296; Fisher and Paykel down 21c to 1210; and Fletcher Building down 5c to 231.

So far there have been only 4 rises and 94 falls on 122 stocks traded.

On Wall Street, the broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index slid 31.56 points, or 3.11 percent, to 984.54. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index sank 56.87 points, or 3.72 percent, to 1,470.93.

All three major indexes -- the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq composite -- are at three-year lows and mired deep in bear market territory.