"Other than that, people are biding their time waiting for the reporting season," Lister said. "The global reporting season is about to get really busy over the next two weeks, that's important because it will give us some leads and we tend to follow some of those bigger offshore markets. We're crossing our fingers we don't see any profit warnings between now and then, and we haven't so far which is good news."
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was the worst performer, down 1.8 per cent to $11.05. Managing director Lewis Gradon has sold almost half of his shares in the medical device maker, raising about $3.1m to help buy a house.
"Markets do tend to take those sorts of things as a negative; if you see an important member of the management team selling, markets are only going to read negatives into that for obvious reasons," Lister said.
New Zealand Refining rose 1.2 per cent to $2.46. In its throughput and margin report for May and June, the oil processor said it achieved a gross refinery margin of USD 7.63 per barrel in the period, and got $58.4m in processing fees, up from $43.3m in the previous year.
"It was slightly better than expected, volume growth was better than expected though they did lose a bit from the impact of currency movements," Lister said. "All-in-all, it wasn't too bad and the market seems reasonably comfortable."
Z Energy rose 1 per cent to $7.98. The company today reported its operating figures to June 30, which showed it sold 1,000 million litres of fuel in the first quarter, up from 975 million litres the prior year, with growth from jet fuel sales.
"It was reasonably solid, not a huge amount of new news - you could almost describe it as a bit neutral to be honest," Lister said.