“Currently, it’s plus-0.9%, which was strong due to a weak employment release reviving hopes of an RBA [Reserve Bank of Australia] rate cut pre-Christmas,” Goodson said.
“This saw the NZD/AUD rise sharply from 0.879 to 0.885, creating a headwind for a number of larger names that tend to be priced out of Australia.”
The market’s newest entrant, Australian gold miner Uvre, ended its first day up 16.07% rising 4c to 32c.
Infratil was the highlight after its CDC business signed a new partnership with Firmus Technologies and Nvidia.
“Little information was provided other than the first stage being a 40MW data centre. Firmus is an unlisted public company that appears to be a neo-cloud provider, presumably funded by Nvidia,” Goodson said.
“Their founders have some interesting backgrounds and it’s unclear if they have any end-customers. This is something of a change in strategy for CDC, which up to now has done deals directly with major providers such as Microsoft, Amazon etc.”
Infratil’s share price rallied 4.95% or 59c to $12.50 after 1.5 million shares changed hands on turnover worth $19.2m.
Fisher and Paykel Healthcare also lifted strongly, up 2.01% or 72c to $36.47 on turnover worth $19.6m.
Meridian Energy, Mercury NZ and Contact Energy were down for the day, with Goodson attributing this to incoming weighting changes in the US$1.8b ($3.1b) iShares Global Clean Energy ETF at the close on Friday.
Meridian’s share price fell 1.53% or 9c to $5.80, Mercury was down 0.78% or 5c to $6.39, while Contact was flat on $9.01 after 920,513 shares changed hands on turnover worth $8.2m.
Meanwhile, Precinct Properties benefited from a positive reweighting in the closing match, lifting 1.63% or 2c to $1.25 after 3.9 million shares worth $4.9m changed hands.
International markets
Stocks mostly rose and the dollar retreated Wednesday on hopes for further US interest rate cuts and a solid set of company earnings.
Gold surged to a new high above US$4200 an ounce, boosted by a fresh flare-up in China-US tensions.
The US dollar was weighed down by warnings on Tuesday from Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell on risks to the US labour market, reinforcing expectations the central bank will cut rates at its October meeting.
Wall Street stocks spent most of the day in positive territory with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq ending up. The Dow retreated modestly.
Bank of America and Morgan Stanley rose after good earnings reports.
– Additional reporting AFP
Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.
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