Moderate start to week on NZX

In the first few minutes of trading for the week, Fletcher Building shares lifted further above the two-month low of $7.86 reached on Thursday.

After gaining 9c on Friday, Fletcher Building shares were up another 5c to $8.00 a few minutes after today's market opening.

Fletcher reached its high of $8.50 just over a month ago, before shedding around 60c during October.

It was one of the main movers as the benchmark NZX-50 index lifted 4.82 points to 3164.98 by 10.15am, having gained 15.7 points on Friday.

Other early share movements included Mainfreight up 2c to $5.32, Infratil up 2c to $1.58, while AMP NZ Office Trust slipped 2c to 78c.

Dual-listed bank Westpac was down 5c to $33.45 early, while ANZ gained 7c to $28.80.

Leading shares Telecom and Contact Energy were unchanged, on $2.52 and $6.02, respectively.

Australian and New Zealand insurer AMP was placed on trading halt pending a material announcement.

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In the United States, stocks ended Friday's session slightly higher, shrugging off Government data showing the unemployment rate hit 10.2 per cent - the highest in 26-1/2 years.

General Electric Co jumped 6.2 per cent after two analysts' upgrades and helped push the industrial sector higher.

"We're certainly seeing continued evidence of economic improvement - except on the employment side - but even there, perhaps we may have seen about the worst," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in New York.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 0.2 per cent to end at 10,023.42, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 0.3 per cent to 1069.30, and the Nasdaq Composite Index added 0.3 per cent to close at 2112.44.

For the week, both the Dow and the S&P 500 rose 3.2 per cent, while the Nasdaq climbed 3.3 per cent.

- NZPA