KEY POINTS:
Following another dreadful day on Wall Street, the New Zealand sharemarket started poorly.
Among leading stocks, Telecom was down 7c early to 234, Contact Energy fell 5c to 711, and Fletcher Building was down 6c to 550.
Around 10.20am the benchmark NZSX-50 index was down 26.05 points, or 0.9 per cent, to 2746.14, having yesterday fallen nearly 1 per cent.
Other stocks to fall early included Ebos Group down 5c to 430, Freightways 6c to 302, Nuplex 9c to 500, NZ Oil & Gas 6c 121, and NZX 5c to 590.
Rakon was down 5c to 175, Ryman Healthcare 5c to 140, with Sky City down 5c to 298.
Among few risers, Air New Zealand firmed 1c early to 89, Sky TV added 4c to 370, and Tourism Holdings lifted 3c to 90 on low volume.
In the US, stocks tumbled after the United States backed away from using its US$700 billion ($1.27 trillion) bailout to mop up sour mortgages and added to uncertainty about how the government plans to revive bank lending.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended unofficially down 4.7 per cent, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index down 5.2 per cent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index down 5.2 per cent.
- NZPA