KEY POINTS:
Telecom continued to regain lost ground on the New Zealand stock exchange this morning.
It was far and away the busiest stock on a quiet start to the day as the benchmark NZX-50 index rose 14.683 points, or 0.537 per cent, to 2750.540, after closing at 2735.857 yesterday.
Telecom, which was worth as little as $2.25 at the end of last year, continued to make gains in January. This morning it rose another 7c to $2.64 - levels it last saw in October last year.
Other stocks to improve, albeit on much smaller volumes, were Hellaby Holdings up 4c, or 3.48 per cent, to $1.19, Restaurant Brands up 1c to 66 and Fletcher Building, up 9c to $5.80.
Auckland Airport was unchanged at $1.84, as was Telstra at $4.50.
Stocks losing value this morning were New Zealand Farming Systems Uruguay, down 2c to 58 and Sky City, down 3c to $3.04.
New Zealand Oil and Gas lost 1c to $1.28, despite announcing this morning it had been granted a new exploration permit for a field off the south Taranaki coast.
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Meanwhile, Wall Street had its second straight moderate advance, rising after companies including United States Steel and American Express managed to post profits in a difficult recession.
The major indexes briefly stumbled after the Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index in January slipped to its lowest level since the reading's inception in 1967. But investors were reassured that the recession isn't taking a heavier toll on many big companies.
Financial stocks that were mostly higher also lent support to the market.
The Dow Jones industrials closed up 58 at 8,174, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 9 to 845.71. The Nasdaq composite gained 15, closed at 1,504.
Advancing issues were ahead of losers by more than 2 to 1. Volume on the New York Stock Exchange came to 1.17 billion shares.
- NZPA
