Telecom helps lift flat Monday market

Telecom's price rose on good volumes yesterday, helping to lift the New Zealand sharemarket. Photo / Supplied

Telecom's price rose on good volumes yesterday, helping to lift the New Zealand sharemarket on a day in which it had a weak lead from offshore markets.

Telecom rose 4c to $2.22 to be the standout performer in an otherwise typically quiet Monday market.

"Some of it has to do with foreign buying in the local market and Telecom is one of our largest stocks," said Grant Williamson, director at Hamilton, Hindin, Greene.

Investors were interested in investing in countries with a high currency and were starting to feel there was some growth in Telecom down the track, he said. "Telecom has been very weak for a long time now. People are looking at the fundamentals and it doesn't look that bad."

The benchmark NZX-50 index closed up 17.643 points, or 0.533 per cent, at 3328.227.

Cavalier Carpets eased 10c to $3.10 after telling shareholders at its annual meeting that it was enjoying good market conditions in Australia but overall difficult market conditions caused it to leave an interim dividend unchanged at 3c a share.

AMP rose 35c to $7.15 after it and France's AXA SA came up with an offer for AXA Asia Pacific that delivers the company's Australian and New Zealand Business to AMP.

Pike River Coal rose a cent to 96c.

Infrastructure investor Infratil rose 2c to $1.90 ahead of its interim result announcement today.

On a day in which September quarter retail sales were higher than expected, Michael Hill rose 1c to 81, Hellaby Holdings rose 2c to 197, and The Warehouse was unchanged at 388.

Steel & Tube eased 9c to $2.30, Methven eased 4c to $1.81 and Rakon eased 2c to $1.26.

NZX eased 3c to $1.51. Xero was unchanged at 195.

In the US, Wall St ended a five-week winning streak on Friday as the threat of rising interest rates in China prompted investors to book profits and reassess bullish positions in equities.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 90.52 points, to 1119, the S&P 500 index slid 1.18 per cent to 14.33 points and the Nasdaq dropped 1.46 per cent to 2518.

- NZPA