The New Zealand sharemarket slipped in early trading, after the Reserve Bank left the official cash rate (OCR) unchanged at 2.5 per cent but indicated it could start hiking rates earlier than previously suggested.
Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard said today that if the economy continued to recover, conditions may support beginning to remove monetary stimulus around the middle of 2010.
Previously he had said the Reserve Bank expected to keep the OCR at the current level until the second half of 2010.
Around 10.15am the benchmark NZX-50 index was down 4.36 points to 3123.28, after falling 9.7 points yesterday, its fourth consecutive daily decline.
Despite the fall in the market as a whole, shares in Hellaby Holdings rose 39c, or 24 percent, early to $2.00, while NZX was up 10c to $8.70, Sky City lifted 2c to $3.30, and Steel & Tube gained 2c to $2.72.
Among shares falling early, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare lost 9c to $3.30, Contact Energy fell 6c to $5.77, NZ Wine Co dropped 20c to $1.85, and Skellerup fell 2c to 49c.
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In the United States, the stock market ended higher as weakness in the US dollar fuelled appetite for riskier assets, propelling shares of financial, technology and natural resource companies into a late-hour advance.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 0.5 percent to 10,337.05 on preliminary data, with the Standard & Poor's 500 Index up 0.4 percent to 1095.89, and the Nasdaq Composite Index up 0.5 percent to 2183.73.
- NZPA
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