The New Zealand sharemarket's benchmark index fell to a two-month low in early trading as the escalating debt crisis in Europe stoked fears a new credit crunch is in the making.In the United States stocks plunged 9 percent at one point, but managed to cla
The New Zealand sharemarket's benchmark index fell to a two-month low in early trading as the escalating debt crisis in Europe stoked fears a new credit crunch is in the making.
In the United States stocks plunged 9 percent at one point, but managed to claw back much of the losses to be down just over 3 percent at the close.
Traders around the world were shaken from their beds and told to start trading amid the plunge as investors sought to stem losses in the rapid market sell-off.
"We did not know what a stock was worth today, and that is a serious problem," said Joe Saluzzi of Themis Trading in New Jersey.
Adding to the confusion, Nasdaq said it was investigating potentially erroneous transactions involving multiple securities executed in a 20-minute period.
In this country the NZX-50 index was down 46.96 points, or 1.5 percent, to 3170.96, after about 15 minutes of trading. That followed a fall of 30.9 points yesterday.
Telecom was down 2c to 213 after reporting a 39 percent fall in third quarter net profit to $97 million, as the company faced increased competition, impacts of the economic slowdown, regulatory issues, and problems with its XT mobile network.
Briscoe Group shares were untraded in the opening minutes, after reporting a 7.4 percent lift in first quarter sales to $96.8m. Yesterday they closed at 131.
Among the biggest falls early, Fletcher Building dropped 20c to 795, Contact Energy fell 12c to 608, Mainfreight lost 9c to 640, Nuplex was down 9c to 320, Port of Tauranga fell 8c to 685, and The Warehouse fell 8c to 361.
Fisher&Paykel Healthcare dropped 5c to 348, and Sky City fell 5c to 300, while stocks falling 4c early included Auckland Airport to 192, Freightways to 317, and NZ Oil&Gas to 146.
In the US, the Dow Jones industrial average ended down 3.2 percent to 10,520.32, the Standard&Poor's 500 Index fell 3.2 percent to 1128.15, and the Nasdaq Composite Index lost 3.4 percent to 2319.64.
