NZ sharemarket falls early, as Fletcher pulls back

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The New Zealand sharemarket fell in early trading, after yesterday notching up its 12th successive trading day of gains.

Fletcher Building shares fell 10c early to 924, having yesterday closed up 14c and reaching a three-year high of 938 in intraday trading.

With stocks in the United States stalling at the end of the first quarter, the benchmark NZX-50 index in this country was down 7.25 points to 3432.6 after about 15 minutes of trading, having yesterday ended up 6.7 points.

Port of Tauranga gained 5c to 825, returning to the record high reached yesterday.

Abano Healthcare was up 2c to 455, and The Warehouse added 2c to 353, while NZ Refining Co lost 4c to 485, Contact Energy dropped 2c to 580, and Nuplex lost 2c to 308.

In the US, stocks ended a solid quarter with the barest of moves, as investors looked ahead to the US jobs report to provide a catalyst to push indexes to new highs for the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 0.3 percent to 12,319.73, the Standard & Poor's 500 dipped 0.2 percent to 1325.83, and the Nasdaq Composite edged up 0.2 percent to 2781.07.

For the month, the Dow edged up 0.76 percent, the S&P shed 0.1 percent and Nasdaq dipped 0.04 per cent.

That trend also proved true for the entire first quarter, with the Dow rising 6.4 percent, compared with the S&P's gain of 5.4 percent and the Nasdaq's advance of 4.8 per cent.

- NZPA