NZ market starts week slowly

The new week on the New Zealand sharemarket got off to a quiet but positive start in the wake of modest gains on Wall Street on Friday.

The benchmark NZSX-50 index closed up 15.63 points, or 0.494 per cent, to 3178.884, having finished down 5.7 points on Friday.

Turnover was worth $71.27 million. There were 50 rises and 26 falls among the 117 stocks traded.

The lead from offshore last week was "pretty good", as the US market went into its latest reporting season, but there were a number of markets closed for holidays on Monday, including Japan, said Stuart Hardie, investment adviser at Craigs Investment Partners.

"We are in limbo, there wasn't much news to trade off," he said.

Fletcher Building fell 2c to 815, Contact Energy gained 9c to 600 and Telecom lifted 1c to 258. On Friday, Fletcher lost 13c, Contact fell 7c and Telecom was down 2c.

Michael Hill rose 1c to 72 after reporting first quarter sales figures which showed its North American stores still struggling.

Air NZ fell 1c to 132 after its services were disrupted by an information technology outage on Sunday.

Horizon was unchanged at 340 ahead of the release of its target statement tomorrow with respect to the bid from Marlborough Lines.

The Warehouse rose 2c to 445, GPG rose 1c to 88 and Hellaby rose 5c to 170.

Infratil was unchanged at 164 as the industrial dispute involving its subsidiary NZ Bus continued to get media coverage.

Fisher and Paykel Appliances eased 2c to 66, NZX fell 2c to 818, TrustPower fell 2c to 746 and SkyCity fell 1c to 323.

Pyne Gould rights fell to just 0.1c and the existing shares were unchanged at 41c. PGG Wrightson rose 2c to 63.

NZ Windfarm rose 1c to 54 and Xero rose 3c to 145. SkyTV rose 6c to 484.

In the United States, stocks climbed on Friday (local time) as investors anticipated positive news from this week's key earnings reports and bullish broker comments boosted tech shares.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended up 0.8 per cent at 9864.94, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 0.6 per cent to 1071.49, and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.7 per cent to 2139.28.

Weekly gains snapped a two-week losing streak and were the best since July. The five-day rally pushed the Dow Jones up 4 per cent for the week, while the S&P 500 advanced 4.5 per cent and the Nasdaq gained 4.5 per cent.

- NZPA