NZ stocks: Market has best week in six months

The New Zealand sharemarket enjoyed a positive day today, capping what has been described as its best week in about six months.

The benchmark NZX-50 was up 37.221 points, or 1.423 per cent, to 2653.475 at the close today. It started the week at 2602.74.

Today's turnover of 30.4 million stocks was worth $77.1m.

"It's probably been the best week we have had for six months, on the back of Australia and the US market. A lot of this market centres around sentiment at the moment, and I think some of that is starting to dissipate," said NZX advisor for ABN Amro Craigs, Martin Allison.

However, there was still a lot of bad news to come, he said, and he wasn't getting too excited just yet.

"It's the end of quarter, we might find the first couple weeks of April things start going backward a little bit. But generally the mood is a lot more buoyant than it was even a month or two ago."

The end of quarter saw a lot of fund managers re-weighting back to the index, he said.

A lot of cash sitting on the sideline was starting to find its way back into the market, bank deposit rates meant retail investors were looking for blue chip stocks with reasonable yield.

"And you can only stay in a very negative mood for only so long. I think people are starting to see the results, both locally and globally, the actions taken by governments to make sure the financial system recovers."

Contact Energy had a good day today, it was up 36c, or 6.22 per cent, to 615, and was probably being revalued by the market and probably coming back to its truer reflection of its underlying value, Mr Allison said.

Earlier in the week, at 550 to 560, it was looking remarkably cheap for a well run company, he said.

Air New Zealand was up 5c to 94, Sky City Entertainment was up 12c, or 4.32 per cent, to 290, Fletcher Building was up 26c, or 4.23 per cent, to 640.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances gained 2c to 53 and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was up 5c to 320.

Auckland Airport was unchanged at 170, as was AMP NZ Office Trust at 88.

Stocks not enjoying the day were Nuplex, which lost 14c to 89, and ANZ Bank, down 82c, or 3.9 per cent, to $20.18

Westpac shed 55c, or 2.28 per cent, to $23.55 and Mainfreight lost 9c to 411.

Tourism Holdings lost 1c to 48 and Telecom lost 2c to 228.

In overseas markets Asian stocks rose on Friday, trying for a fifth day of gains, as hopes the global economy could not get any worse kept investors buying riskier assets, though US and Japanese data left some doubts lingering.

Japan's Nikkei share average rose 1 per cent after earlier touching a 2-1/2-month high. Car makers and exporters of technology, such as Honda Motor Co and Canon Inc, were among the biggest boosts to the index.

The MSCI index of Asia Pacific stocks outside Japan edged up 0.5 per cent, heading for the largest weekly rise since early November.

A sanguine outlook for demand and higher metals prices supported mining stocks and provided the main thrust to Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index, which climbed 0.8 per cent.

- NZPA