Contact Energy was among the shares to gain early when the New Zealand sharemarket opened for the week, but remained below its 4-1/2-month intraday high reached on Friday.Around 10.15am the benchmark NZX-50 index was up 2.54 points to 3307.54, a few point
Contact Energy was among the shares to gain early when the New Zealand sharemarket opened for the week, but remained below its 4-1/2-month intraday high reached on Friday.
Around 10.15am the benchmark NZX-50 index was up 2.54 points to 3307.54, a few points below the six-month intraday high reached on Friday, which ended with a 14.9-point gain.
Today, Contact Energy rose 5c early to 590, having been as high as 595 on Friday. Sky City rose 3c to 305, on top of its 12c lift on Friday which came after the casino operator said first quarter revenue was 3.3 percent up on a year ago and net profit was up 3.7 percent.
Port of Tauranga lifted 4c early to 749, Hellaby Holdings lost 3c to 200, Vector fell 3c to 240, Fletcher Building was down 2c to 819, and Telecom unchanged on 205.
In the United States, stocks ended on a flat note on Friday (local time), wrapping up another strong month driven by expectations the Federal Reserve will flood the economy with cash this week.
Investors kept trading to a minimum this week in anticipation of the Fed's quantitative easing announcement. Activity the last several weeks has been heavily influenced by hopes for a large round of asset buying.
The Dow Jones industrial average added 0.04 percent to 11,118.49, the Standard&Poor's 500 Index shed 0.04 percent to 1183.26, and the Nasdaq Composite Index edged up just 0.04 point to 2507.41.
For the week, the Dow dipped 0.1 percent, while the S&P 500 edged up only 0.02 percent and the Nasdaq added 1.1 percent.
