NZ Shares: Market slips at first, but rebounds early

The New Zealand sharemarket started off mildly negative but bounced up within a few minutes of opening.

The early decline was partly due to falls in some leading shares with Fletcher Building initially giving up some of Friday's gain and Telecom slipped a little further.

Fletcher was down 5c early but then improved to be unchanged on $6.32, having gained 18c on Friday, while Telecom added to its 4c fall by dropping another 1c early today to $2.58.

Fletcher's shares reached a six-month high of $6.78 in mid-April but has trended downwards since then.

Around 10.20am the benchmark NZX-50 index was up 11.03 points to 2667.42, having started the day in slightly negative territory and after losing 2.5 points on Friday.

Among shares to lose ground early, Mainfreight gave up 5c to $4.30 on low volume, Pike River Coal was down 2c to 77, and Air New Zealand slipped 1c to $1.10

Helping pull the index into positive territory was a 12c lift in Contact Energy shares to $5.70, while Sky City gained 7c to $2.80.

Other shares rising early included Sanford, up 10c to $5.60, Ebos Group up 5c to $4.90, Cavalier Corp up 5c to $1.75, and Infratil up 2c to $1.55. Dual-listed Westpac rose 90c to $26.30.

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In the United Stocks, stocks rallied on Friday as earnings showed companies have weathered the recession and economic data raised hopes the economic cycle may have hit a bottom.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 1.5 per cent to 8076.29, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 1.7 per cent to 866.23, and the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 2.6 per cent to 1694.29.

For the week, the Dow fell 0.7 per cent and the S&P slid 0.4 per cent, while the Nasdaq rose 1.3 per cent.

- NZPA