NZ stocks: Market settles after early activity

12.00 pm

The NZSE-40 temporarily climbed above the psychological 2000 mark this morning for the first time since before the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The NZSE-40 capital index was trading at 2001.86 just after 9am but had slipped back to 1996.39 by late morning trading - up 1.49 points on a turnover of $24.7 million.

The last time the NZSE-40 exceeded 2000 points was September 6.

The market's rise was fuelled by early activity in Telecom stocks which rose 9c early in trading to 474 before settling back to 466. Telecom has risen 15 per cent in nearly a fortnight after hitting an eight-year low of 413 on October 24.

Richard Burton of Forsyth Barr said Telecom appeared to have broken out of its downward trend.

"Telecom stocks internationally have been sold off a lot ... There's lots of possible bad stories around with the major shareholders selling down and all that sort of thing, so there's been a lot of pressure on the price."

Another factor driving the market this morning was "fairly bullish markets overseas".

"A lot of markets are back, the Aussie market's at an all time high."

Auckland International Airport was trading down 5c to 365 this morning after solid gains in the last few days, on speculation that Auckland City Council may sell its quarter share.

Mr Burton said good quality stocks were moving quite strongly including Hallenstein Glasson up 5c to 283 and Restaurant Brands up 2c at 184.

Fletcher Forests preference shares topped the turnover with 1.6 million shares changing hands. The stock's share price was up 1c to 28.

Fisher and Paykel slipped 10c to 1500 on the back of $5 million worth of shares.

Other stocks to move include Air NZ A and B shares up 1c to 29, Frucor down 2c to 243, Natural Gas Corp down 5c to 125, Contact down 2c to 417 and Tranz Rail slid 5c to 435 after speculation it will post a loss of small $3 million loss for the first quarter of its financial year.

INL was untraded. It closed yesterday at 365. There had been no discernible effect on advertising revenues from the September 11 terrorist attacks and revenues in the year to date were trading ahead of last year, the company told shareholders at the annual meeting today.

So far there had been 44 rises and 28 falls on 120 traded stocks.

- NZPA