KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand sharemarket slipped again on light volume mostly because United States equities ended lower.
The benchmark NZSX-50 index closed down 23.961 points, or 0.877 per cent, at 2706.721. Just $64 million worth of shares were traded. There were 22 rises and 60 falls.
"The Australian market is just flicking in and out of the red and some of the Asian markets are slightly better," said Stephen Wright of ASB Securities.
He said the theme of the day was light turnover on the equities market. Brokers have been busy marketing fixed interest offerings to investors ahead of the Christmas break.
But the volume of shares traded continues to be akin to what would normally be expected during the Christmas break itself.
There was little corporate news today to provide situations for individual stocks. So most price movements simply reflected the order flow on the day and not too much could be read into them.
Contact Energy was down 14c to 685 and Telecom was down 7c at 232 but Fletcher Building was up 7c at 562.
Property trusts were firm yesterday but today were mixed. ING Medical Properties Trust was up 2c at 110 and Property for Industry was unchanged at 108.
Guinness Peat Group was down 2c at 102, Tourism Holdings was down 5c at 65 and Auckland Airport was down 3c at 169.
Tower was down 6c at 148 and AMP was down 40c at 620.
Cavalier was down 8c at 193 and Freightways was down 3c at 290.
NZX was down 15c at 535. Goodman Fielder was up 6c at 166. Rakon was down 10c at 130 and SkyCity was down 4c at 296. NZ Refining was down 2c at 613.
US stocks stumbled on Wednesday driven down by energy companies.
Oilfield services leader Schlumberger Ltd said its 2008 profit would fall short of Wall Street's estimates as the global economic slowdown hurts spending on oil and gas exploration.
The Federal Reserve's Beige Book, an anecdotal report on 12 regions, showed economic activity has weakened across the United States since early October. This offered more evidence of the economy's dire state.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 75.66 points, or 0.89 per cent, at 8,343.43. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slipped 6.04 points, or 0.71 per cent, to 841.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 6.52 points, or 0.45 per cent, at 1,443.28.
- NZPA
