30 Jan 2014

Stronger day for share market

6:56 am on 30 January 2014

The New Zealand share market had a stronger day after four days of declines, the benchmark Top 50 Index gaining 34 points to 4883.

Murray & Co director Johnny Cochrane said more positive news from offshore allowed the New Zealand market to rebound.

"We've seen some positive leads from Wall Street and that's lead to a stronger day in New Zealand, primarily lead by some of our tech stocks," Mr Cochrane said.

"Just from a macro point of view, a lot of that has been caused by a stabilisation in some of the financial markets and emerging markets in particular, and particularly the currency markets, so that's all positive for New Zealand's equity markets."

Xero shares rose 54 cents to $41.99, SLI Systems gained 14 cents to $2.59 and GeoOp climbed 33 cents to $2.63.

However, Synlait fell 11 cents to $3.71 after Tuesday's statement it expected to make an annual net profit of $30-$35 million, below market expectations of about $40 million. Synlait shares started trading in July last year after it raised $75 million at $2.20 per share.

Dollar stronger

The New Zealand dollar was slightly stronger against all the currencies of our major trading partners with the exception of the Australian dollar, against which it was little changed.

ANZ Bank senior foreign exchange strategist Sam Tuck said some of the risk aversion which had been weighing on the New Zealand dollar had abated.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand will review its official cash rate on Thursday morning, while the Federal Reserve's open market committee will also make a statement.

Just after 5pm, the New Zealand dollar was buying: 82.78 US cents, 94 Australian cents, 49.94 pence, 0.6062 euro and 85.45 yen.