NZ sharemarket falls after retreat

The New Zealand sharemarket fell today in line with a trend in Asian markets.

The benchmark NZX-50 index closed down 20.857 points, or 0.68 per cent, to 3045.719. Turnover was worth $86 million. There were 29 rises and 46 falls among the 114 stocks traded.

"A lot of the Asian markets are down and the Chinese market is down after being closed for three days for a holiday," said Ross Cuthbert, adviser at Craigs Investment Partners.

Guinness Peat Group closed on its session low, down 3c at 63. Mr Cuthbert said the market continued to be under-whelmed by the company's demerger proposal.

"I think value will be unlocked in time but realistically it is probably two years away. The market is impatient for that value to be returned and it is weighing on the share price," he said.

SkyTV fell 7c to 495 with brokers saying it may have been buoyed earlier by corporate activity in the sector as News Corp seeks to take control of BSkyB and that speculation was now receding.

Telecom fell 3c to 186, having reached its highest level in nearly three weeks during trading yesterday at 194, as the stock tries to pull away from the record low 179 touched last week.

Among other top stocks Contact Energy was down 7c to 577 after releasing its May operational report. NZX rose 1c to 149 on a day of its annual meeting.

Fletcher Building rose 3c to 821 after being unchanged in early trading.

Goodman Fielder rose 4c to 170 and said after the market closed that it had raised A$350 million in the United States.

Infratil eased 1c to 160, Mainfreight eased 5c to 615 and Freightways eased 6c to 282. Auckland Airport rose 3c to 190 and APN News rose 4c to 276.

Methven rose 4c to 168 and Pike River Coal rose 2c to 92. The Warehouse rose 4c to 360 and Hellaby eased 5c to 160.

Tenon rose 10c to 105 and Cavalier Carpets fell 10c to 250.

In the US, stocks finished flat as cautious comments from FedEx and the weak housing market data overshadowed a surge in industrial production.

Investors were caught off guard after package company FedEx Corp, deemed an economic bellwether because it serves a wide range of industries, said higher costs would constrain 2011 earnings.

The US government said housing starts fell more than expected in May, underscoring the uneven nature of the economic recovery and casting a shadow over better-than-expected industrial production data for the same month.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 0.05 per cent to 10,409.46, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index edged down just 0.06 per cent to 1114.61, and the Nasdaq Composite Index inched up just 0.05 of a point to 2305.93.

- NZPA