NZ stocks: Market kicks off week on wrong foot

12.00pm

The New Zealand sharemarket started the week on the wrong foot today, with the benchmark top-50 index losing 1.27 points.

By mid-morning the NZ50 gross index was down 0.07 per cent at 1897.18, and the NZSE-40 capital index lost 0.14 per cent, or 2.59 points, to 1879.40.

Turnover was light, with 5.49 million stocks traded worth $18.13 million.

Alan Wills of Forsyth Barr Frater Williams said the session had been extremely quiet, with about $14 million of the turnover done before the market opened. That left only $4 million worth of on-market trade.

"That amount's not unusual, but what's unusual is that virtually all of it's been off-market."

The session was likely to continue quietly with people sitting on the sidelines as war in Iraq loomed closer, he said.

Market leader Telecom, which has not traded above 500 since November, was down 2c at 420.

Australian rival Telstra was up 3c at 443, and fellow trans-Tasman stock AMP gained 25c to 806 to continue its rise off an all-time low of 630 on Thursday.

Stocks going ex-dividend today were NGC Holdings (4c per share), Waste Management (8.3cps), and Wrightson (3.5cps).

By mid-morning NGC was down 1c at 143, Waste Management lost 9c to 306, and Wrightson was down 5c at 108.

Elsewhere on the market, Auckland Airport lost 2c to 533, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was down 5c at 920, retailer Briscoe Group lost 3c to 232, The Warehouse was down 1c at 574, and Sky City casino was down 2c at 872 on light turnover of 7684 stocks.

Meat exporter Richmond was down 1c at 311, equal to the revised offer price from South Island suitor PPCS.

On the up side, Contact Energy gained 3c to 450, Powerco rose 2c to 130, Fisher & Paykel Appliances was up 3c at 955 on a mere 649 stocks, Fletcher Building gained 1c to 362, and Baycorp Advantage was up 1c at 133.

Following the High Court decision on Friday forcing US investor Perry Corp to sell 36 million shares in Rubicon, Rubicon was unchanged at 69.

Fellow Rubicon investor, and beneficiary of the ruling, Guinness Peat Group, was up 1c at 152. That was despite news today of GPG posting a 9 per cent fall in annual profit to £42.5 million ($124 million).

There were 42 falls and 23 rises on the 105 stocks traded.

Higher closes offshore markets on Friday failed to flow through to the New Zealand market today.

Britain's FTSE-100 index rose 3.3 per cent on Friday, and the DJ Stoxx index of the top 600 European stocks closed up 3.93 per cent.

On Wall St, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.49 per cent at 7859.71, the Standard and Poor's 500 gained 0.2 per cent to 833.26, and the technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index was down 0.04 per cent at 1340.24.

- NZPA