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The New Zealand sharemarket edged higher in early trading, with investors around the world rattled at signs of increasingly sluggish growth in the United States and elsewhere.
Around 10.10am the benchmark NZSX-50 index was up 2.41 points to 3375.85, after climbing 6.2 points yesterday.
Among the main early changes was a 3c rise in top stock Telecom to 322, after a 9c fall yesterday.
Fletcher Building added to its 17c gain yesterday with an early 7c lift to 747, while Contact Energy continued to slip, down 4c early today to 832 following yesterday's 3c easing.
The two Fisher & Paykel stocks which rose yesterday as the New Zealand dollar tumbled had differing reactions to the currency's overnight rebound.
F&P Appliances was up a further 5c early to 194, on top of yesterday's 9c gain, but F&P Healthcare slipped 1c to 330 after its 11c rise yesterday.
Among other early movements today, Mainfreight was down 3c to 705, Tower down 5c to 210, Sky TV down 2c to 491, while Sky City lifted 2c to 362.
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In the US the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq fell, but the Dow Jones industrial average eked out a modest gain, helped by Home Depot.
The home improvement retailers' shares rose 4.5 per cent after its chief executive said the battered US housing market's decline may be nearing an end.
And General Motors Corp, another Dow component, said it thinks it has seen the bottom of the downturn in the auto industry.
The Dow rose 0.14 per cent to 11,532.88, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 0.20 per cent to 1274.99. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 0.66 per cent at 2333.73.
- NZPA
