NZ stocks: Shares dip, Briscoes star performer

12.00 pm

The New Zealand sharemarket slipped a tad by mid-morning today, with newcomer Briscoes about the only stock of note.

The benchmark NZSE-40 index was down 6.92 points at 2028.66 by just after 11.30am, on light turnover worth $25 million.

"It is a market that has really got sideways momentum at the moment," JB Were senior investment advisor Peter Stokes said.

"The last month and a half has seen a lot of portfolio jiggling going on and that may be coming to a bit of a close. You are seeing stocks pretty much confined to a tight range at the moment."

Among the leading stocks Telecom slipped 4c to 491, Fletcher Building was down 2c at 290, Contact Energy lost 3c to 395 and BaycorpAdvantage was down 10c at 735.

Discount homeware and sporting goods retailer Briscoe Group -- which debuted on the local bourse on Friday -- was one of the few to buck the trend, trading up 8c at 154 -- against its issue price of $1 per share.

"I think people are warming to that story and it has held up pretty well," Mr Stokes said.

On the news front, current account data showing New Zealand spent $1.706 billion more than it earned in the September quarter did little to sway the market.

The September year deficit was $3.90 billion. That's the equivalent to 3.4 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, with both figures bang on economists' forecasts.

Other stocks to gain ground by mid-morning included Advantage Group, up 2c at 50c, Sky City, up 5c at 625, Sky TV, up 5c at 395, and Fisher & Paykel Appliances, up 5c at 1045.

Falls outnumbered rises by 38 to 29 among the 113 stocks traded so far today.

In the US overnight, blue-chip stocks rose, lifting the Dow above 10,000 for the first time in more than a week, as investors saw in new economic data a possible end to the recession, and hoped for progress on economic-stimulus legislation.

But technology stocks fell after negative announcements from Motorola Inc. and Micron Technology Inc.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 72.10 points, or 0.72 per cent, to 10,070.49, according to the latest data, while the Nasdaq composite fell 21.87 points, or 1.09 per cent, to 1982.89. The broad Standard & Poor's 500 added 6.64 points, or 0.58 per cent, to 1149.56.

- NZPA