KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand sharemarket is down about 1 per cent after a big fall on Wall St.
Just before 1pm, the benchmark NZX-50 index was steady at 2721, down 28 points from yesterday's close.
Telecom was down 4c early to 259, Contact Energy lost 6c to 665 and Fletcher Building gave up 7c to 545.
With bank stocks particularly hard hit in the US, dual-listed bank stocks fell heavily early in this country with ANZ down 35c to 1505 and Westpac down 30c to 2000.
Some of the other bigger losers included Sky City down 8c to 290, The Warehouse down 8c to 340, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare down 5c to 332, Sky TV down 5c to 415, and Nuplex down 5c to 250.
Stocks falling 3c early included Auckland Airport to 189, and Infratil to 177.
The few stocks to rise early included NZ Refining Co up 5c to 735 and Port of Tauranga up 5c to 580.
Just after opening the NZX-50 index fell 30.92 points, or 1.12 per cent, to 2719.13, on top of a 16.5-point fall yesterday.
Meanwhile, US stocks tumbled as a lack of detail in the government's plan to shore up the financial system rattled investors and fuelled doubts about steps taken to contain the economic meltdown.
The Dow Jones industrial average provisionally ended 4.7 per cent lower, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 4.9 per cent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index shed 4.2 per cent.
The S&P index of financial stocks fell 11 per cent, while the KBW index of banking stocks dropped about 14 per cent.
- NZPA