A chill wind blowing through the retail sector continued to cool the sharemarket in early trading today.
The local market, which was down in early trading for the third successive day following four up days, got no encouragement from Wall Street which fell heavily again as oil pricesjumped again.
Briscoe Group fell 11 per cent to 112 yesterday after reporting a 10 per cent fall in April quarter same store sales. It was untraded today, but other stocks in the sector took a tumble.
Postie Plus fell 3c, 6 per cent, to 46c, Smith's City fell 2c, 4 per cent, to 46c, Michael Hill International fell 2c, 2 per cent, to 87c and Pumpkin Patch, which fell 9c yesterday, lost another 2c to 172.
Hallenstein Glasson, which lost 5c yesterday, was today steady on 355 while The Warehouse, which lost 12c yesterday, recovered 1c to 565.
The NZSX-50 benchmark index, which yesterday fell 54.26 points, was down 16.7 points to 3580.1 at 10.20am.
Among the leaders, Telecom was down 4c to 381, Fletcher Building down 13c to 824 to add to yesterday's 23c loss, and Contact Energy was off 6c to 900.
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, off 8c yesterday, regained 5c to 265.
Freight and logistics firms Mainfreight and Freightways, which have prospered in the wake of the Toll's sale of the railways to the Government on Monday, retreated today - Freightways down 5c to 330 and Mainfreight down 10c to 685.
Sky TV, which yesterday fell 8c, lost another 4c to 381.
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Wall Street stocks finished markedly lower as oil prices soared to fresh record peaks above US$123 ($159) a barrel, renewing fears about inflationary pressures.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average of blue chips ended down 207.05 points (1.59 per cent) at 12,813.78. The technology-laden Nasdaq composite finished down 44.82 points (1.80 per cent) at 2438.49 while the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 25.69 points (1.81 per cent) to a preliminary close of 1392.57.
