NZ stocks: Flat start after Easter

The New Zealand sharemarket returned from the Easter long weekend to a little buoyancy in early trading to reach 3496.228 points just before lunch - the highest level in nearly three years - but then came off the boil.

Despite having closed up 19.6 points last Thursday, ending the shortened week before Easter on a positive note, the NZX50 benchmark index fell sharply in a few minutes from 11.30am and dipped several more times to finish down 5.913 points on last Thursday, at 3486.483, a fall of 0.169 per cent.

A total of 24.3 million shares, valued at $66.65 million, changed hands, with 31 rises and 36 falls among the 111 stocks traded.

In early trade today Sky City fell 3c but at the end of the day finished down only 1c at 345, Abano Healthcare slipped 2c to 452, while Tower gained 4c to 189 and Hallenstein Glasson jumped 1.76 per cent, by 7c to 405.

Among leading stocks, Fletcher Building was rose 3c in early trade but finished the day down 2c at 919, and Contact Energy finished unchanged at 586.

Shares in NZ Farming Systems Uruguay (NZFSU) were untraded early after Olam International said it was seeking to buy the 22 per cent of NZFSU it did not already own at 70c per share. But it finished the day up 27 per cent, by 15c to 70c, from last week's 55c, after a minority shareholder complained the latest offer was not high enough. There were five small trades totalling only 83,000 shares.

Trading on the Australian stock market is tipped to open flat tomorrow after a five-day break and should stay that way if new inflation figures are within official targets.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will release its consumer price index for the March quarter at 1130 AEST tomorrow.

Commsec chief economist Craig James predicted an underlying inflation rate of about 0.6-0.7 per cent for the quarter, with the economy on track to record annual inflation at the lower end of the 2-3 per cent target.

When the ASX reopens tomorrow, US markets will have completed three days of trading since Australian markets closed on Good Friday.

Wall Street was mixed on Thursday and Monday.

About 5.4 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, below the daily average of 7.74 billion.

Kimberly-Clark cut the low end of its full-year outlook because the costs of pulp and other goods rose more than twice as much as it had expected.

The threat of rising commodity costs will remain in the spotlight for one of the busiest weeks of earnings, with 180 S&P 500 companies set to report this week, including other major consumer names like Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 0.2 per cent to end at 12,479.88, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index shed 0.2 per cent to 1335.25, while the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.2 per cent to close at 2825.88.

- NZPA