New Zealand shares joined a worldwide sell-off as US President Donald Trump spooked investors by ratcheting up his trade war with China. That weighed on the local reporting season, which saw Freightways punished for its cautious outlook.
The S&P/NZX 50 Index dropped 138.88 points, 1.3 per cent, to 10,483.47. Within the index, 43 stocks fell, three rose, and four were unchanged. Turnover was $103 million, with just four stocks trading on volumes of more than a million shares.
Stocks across the Asia Pacific followed Wall Street lower with investors spooked by Trump's escalating rhetoric with China. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was the hardest hit in Asia, down 3.1 per cent in afternoon trading, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 1.6 per cent and Singapore's Straits Times Index was down 1.7 per cent.
"Trump seems to be losing patience quite dramatically at the moment. It's lifted to another level and the markets were pretty keen to de-risk themselves over the weekend," said Peter McIntyre, an investment advisor at Craigs Investment Partners.
Still, the light trading volumes indicated that overseas investors weren't fleeing the New Zealand market, which would have weighed more heavily on the more liquid stocks, he said.