The sharemarket rose slightly in light trade this morning with Air New Zealand's weakness apparently halted for the moment.
"The Air NZ stocks have recovered a bit. Basically people are picking that the stock has been oversold," Credit Suisse First Boston dealer David Price said.
Air NZ's domestic A shares rose 2c
to 97 and the Bs added 7c to 144, having fallen sharply yesterday following the grounding of 10 jets belonging to subsidiary Ansett Australia over the Easter break, for safety reasons.
The airline's recovery contributed to a 10.39 point rise in the NZSE-40 capital index to 2052.90 by around 11am.
Overall market turnover was a light however, with just 6.5 million shares worth $15.58 million changing hands.
"It has got a better tone to the market but it is very very quiet," Mr Price said.
Investors appeared to be biding their time ahead of tomorrow's meeting rate setting meeting of the Reserve Bank, he said.
Analysts are picking the Reserve Bank will cut rates by 25 basis points to 6.00 percent. This morning's inflation data, which showed inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, fell 0.2 percent in the March quarter, adds fuel to this theory.
"The Reserve Bank has been scared about inflation (in the past).
"But really they have only got to take a look out the window (at slowing world growth) to realise that the next cut is virtually imminent and the CPI should give them even more comfort," Mr Price said.
In company news Carter Holt Harvey this morning posted a 17 percent gain in net profit for the March 2001 year, but warned of hard times to come. Its stock gained 3c to 176 by mid morning.
Elsewhere, Telecom rose 10c to 596, Auckland Airport lost 2c to 358, Contact also dropped a cent to 294, Fletcher Forests fell a cent to 33, Advantage firmed 2c to 79, Genesis added 5c to 405 and Wrightson put on 1c to 63.
In all rises outnumbered falls 25 to 20 among the 94 stocks traded.
- NZPA