KEY POINTS:
Market heavyweights Telecom and Contact Energy helped edge the sharemarket into the positive in early trading today on a day when Wall Street powered to new highs.
Telecom was up 3c to 479 and Contact was up 5c to 870. Contact was up as concerns about the dry autumn have pushed up wholesale electricity prices.
Fletcher Building held yesterday's big gains when it jumped 36c to 1220, its highest close for the year and just off an earlier alltime high of 1223.
Fletcher was bid up following a takeover bid for Britain's Hanson, the world's second largest construction materials company.
The benchmark NZSX-50 index was up 10.64 to 4238.10 at 10.10am.
Turnover was worth $43 million.
Hellaby was up 6c to 404 after the investment firm said its shoe retailing arm, which is on the block, recorded strong sales growth in its April quarter.
There was little else of note in the top 50 with Fisher & Paykel Healthcare rising 3c to 360 following a fall of the New Zealand dollar overnight, and Guinness Peat up 2c to 231.
Among the smaller stocks, Dominion Finance was down 6c to 230 and Richina Pacific was down 2c to 50.
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On Wall Street, US stocks jumped as major investors disclosed stakes in Citigroup, several railroads and health-care companies, raising expectations that further takeovers could be coming.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 103.69 points, or 0.77 per cent, to closed at 13,487.53, a new record. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 12.95 points, or 0.86 per cent, to 1514.14 and the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 22.13 points, or 0.88 per cent, to 2547.42.
- NZPA