The New Zealand sharemarket was lower in the first few minutes after opening for the week, as investors' eyes were on European Union finance ministers' struggle to contain their debt crisis and work out details of a new rescue mechanism for financially tr
The New Zealand sharemarket was lower in the first few minutes after opening for the week, as investors' eyes were on European Union finance ministers' struggle to contain their debt crisis and work out details of a new rescue mechanism for financially troubled governments.
Around 10.15am the benchmark NZX-50 index was down 10.98 points to 3147.87, after losing 59.1 points on Friday amid turmoil on global equity markets.
Since the start of business last Wednesday the index has lost 150 points, and is now back to levels of late February.
Among the market leaders Telecom was down 3c early today to 210, after falling to a record intraday low of 207 on Friday, while Fletcher Building was unchanged on 795 and Contact Energy unchanged on 607.
Ebos Group was down 7c early to 620, Nuplex lost 5c to 320, Guinness Peat Group lost 4c to 84, Steel&Tube was down 4c to 253, Mainfreight fell 4c to 636, and NZ Refining Co was down 3c to 362.
But it was not all red ink, with Sky TV up 6c to 480, The Warehouse up 3c to 365, Trustpower up 2c to 722, and Michael Hill International gaining 2c to 74.
In the United States, stocks turned negative for the year on Friday on fears of another credit crisis stemming from Greece's souring finances and lingering questions about what triggered the previous session's dramatic plunge.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 1.3 percent to end at 10,380.43, the Standard&Poor's 500 Index was down 1.5 percent to 1110.88, and the Nasdaq Composite Index finished 2.3 percent lower at 2265.64.
The weekly declines for the Dow and the S&P 500 were the steepest since March 2009 when the market hit a 12-year low. The Nasdaq had its largest weekly drop since November 2008.
For the week, the Dow was off 5.7 percent, the S&P 500 was down 6.4 percent and the Nasdaq dipped 8 percent. Over the past two weeks the Nasdaq has fallen more than 10 percent, the threshold which many traders define as a market correction.
