NZ Shares: Fletcher Building helps market to early gain

An early rise in Fletcher Building stocks helped the sharemarket start the week with a small gain.

Fletcher was up 10c in the first few minutes, before dropping back 5c, taking the stock to $5.20, after a 12c fall on Friday.

Contact Energy was up 5c early to $5.60 on top of a 4c gain on Friday, while among other leading shares Telecom lost 2c early to $2.37, following Friday's 7c loss.

Around 10.15am the benchmark NZX-50 index was up 2.68 points to 2473.72, having lost 20.4 points on Friday.

Among other early risers, Hellaby Holdings gained 5c to 50, Sky City was up 4c to $2.60, The Warehouse rose 4c to $3.34, and Tourism Holdings added 3c to 50.

Stocks falling early included Freightways down 4c to $2.90, and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare down 3c to $3.35.


In the US on Friday, stocks mostly limped into positive territory after a week in which they took a battering.

The Dow and S&P rebounded late in the day to end higher as surging oil prices lifted energy stocks and offset a sell-off in technology shares on bets that the slowing economy will sap consumer spending on gadgets.

Financial shares came off their lows after the Wall Street Journal reported that Lloyds Banking Group and the British government had agreed on an asset protection scheme, easing concerns about frail capital positions at global banks.

During the session, the Dow and S&P touched fresh 12-year lows.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.5 per cent to 6626.94, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index inched up just 0.1 per cent to 683.38, while the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.4 per cent to 1293.85.

It was the fourth week of declines for all the indexes, with the Dow losing 6.2 per cent, the S&P 500 sliding 7 per cent, and the Nasdaq dropping 6.1 per cent.

- NZPA