Strong start for NZ shares

The New Zealand stock exchange started the day strongly, after a 1.9 per cent fall yesterday took the market's losses since its most recent high in mid-April to more than 10 per cent.

Today's early surge came after stocks in the United States staged a furious late-day rally as the focus shifted from European debt woes to buying after US shares hit six-month lows.

In this country, the benchmark NZX-50 index was up 22.1 points, or 0.7 per cent, to 3025.93 around 10.15am.

Fletcher Building reversed much of yesterday's 21c loss, with a 19c gain early today to $7.80, while Telecom lifted 6c to $1.91 after reaching a record closing low of $1.85 yesterday.

Port of Tauranga lifted 5c to $6.90, Hellaby Holdings added 4c to $1.60, Methven lifted 3c to $1.58, The Warehouse was up 2c to $3.54 and Auckland Airport gained 2c to $1.85.

Dual-listed bank ANZ was up 48c to $26.68, while Westpac added 10c to $27.60.

Early falls included Ebos Group down 8c to $6.01, and NZ Oil & Gas down 2c to $1.38.

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare shares were unchanged on $3.40, after reporting a 15 per cent rise in full year profit.

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The rally in the US came after major US indexes fell more than 3 per cent early in the session on growing questions about the stability of the European banking system after a small Spanish bank failed over the weekend.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended down 0.2 per cent at 10,043.75, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained just 0.04 per cent to end at 1074.03, and the Nasdaq Composite Index shed 0.1 per cent to 2210.95.

- NZPA