KEY POINTS:
The sharemarket opened positively with No 2 stock Fletcher Building underpinning the market.
Sentiment was helped by a strong showing on Wall Street which broke a four-day losing streak.
The NZSX-50 index was up 21 points to 4128 at 10.20am having gained 18 points yesterday after a weak opening.
Twenty-one of the 56 stocks traded were up and eight down. Turnover was light at $21 million.
Fletcher was up another 15c to 1145 after gaining 12c yesterday when it told shareholders it was comfortable with analyst expectations of annual net profit before unusuals of between $450m-$460m.
It said earnings for the first four months were ahead of last year, despite softness in some sectors.
Top stock Telecom was up 6c to 433 to add to yesterday's 6c gain. The Independent reported rivals saying it will be easy for Telecom to shut rivals out when it built its next generation network.
Contact Energy continued its downtrend, falling 2c to 895.
Nuplex was unchanged after the chemical and resins company announced it had bought the G-Cure acrylic polyol resins business in the US from giant German chemical firm Cognis for an undisclosed sum.
Fisher & Paykel Appliances doubled yesterday's 6c gain to be on 346 while another exporter, Rakon, was up 6c to 516.
Sky TV was up 4c to 580. Tourism Holdings, which announced plans to enter the US market with its campervans, was down 2c to 232.
Colonial Motors was up 7c to 332.
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US stocks surged after four days of losses as a slide in oil prices below US$92 ($124) easing concerns about major banks' credit losses and optimism over Wal-Mart Stores Inc's earnings lifted investor sentiment.
The Nasdaq Composite Index, spurred by a 10.5 per cent jump in Apple, gained 3.46 per cent -- the tech-laden index's biggest single-day percentage rise in more than four years.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 323.12 points, or 2.49 per cent, to end unofficially at 13,310.67. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 41.37 points, or 2.87 per cent, to finish unofficially at 1480.55. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 89.52 points to close at 2673.65.
- NZPA