KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand sharemarket was down soon after opening today on the back of new worries in the US mortgage market.
The NZSX-50 index was down 23.35 points, or 0.75 per cent, to 3098.2 at 10.15am today.
It was the first sharemarket to open after fears US mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not survive the American housing crisis and would need to be bailed out.
Shares in the two mortgage lending giants fell sharply this past week and, combined with oil at a record price above US$147 ($195), that led to all the US market indices falling on Friday.
The fall was spiked by fears Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not have enough capital to make it through the worst US housing crisis since the Great Depression.
US Treasury Department officials were trying to make sure Freddie Mac would be able sell a scheduled US$3 billion ($4 billion) in securities on Monday.
The sale will be a barometer of market appetite for the firm's securities and indicate whether further help is needed.
After the US market closed retail bank IndyMac was shut down by regulators, making it the fifth US bank to fail this year, and was expected to reopen as IndyMac Federal Bank early this week.
Locally, the sharemarket had a volatile week reaching a new three-year-low during Friday's trading with the NZSX-50 finishing the week at 3121.5.
In early trading today market leader Telecom was down 5c to 334.
Most stocks lost ground shortly after 10am. Contact was down 12c to 748, Fletcher Building 5c to 633, Freightways 6c to 295, Infratil 3c to 193, Sky City 1c to 299, Sky TV 5c to 416.
Ahead of retail trade figures due out today retail stock Pumpkin Patch was down 1c to 143, Hallenstein Glassons was untraded and The Warehouse unchanged at 400.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed on Friday down 1.14 per cent, to 11,100.54. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slid 1.11 per cent, to 1239.49. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 0.83 per cent, to 2239.08.
At one point, all three indices were down more than 2 per cent, with the Dow briefly dipping below the 11,000 level for the first time since July 2006. It was the Nasdaq and the S&P 500's sixth straight weekly decline, their longest weekly losing streaks since 2004.
- NZPA