30 Jan 2009

NZ and Australian markets down

1:00 pm on 30 January 2009

The New Zealand stock market is down after losses on Wall Street on Thursday. At 12.15pm on Friday, the NZX 50 index was down seven points to 2763 on turnover of $70 million.

Telecom accounted for over two-thirds of that, falling 2 cents to $2.64. Contact Energy was up 10c to $6.93 and Fletcher Building was down 4c cents to $5.48.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances was down 2c to $1.26.

The NZX Group was unchanged at $5.45 after announcing it planned to sell part of its TZ1 carbon trading business for $65 million in shares in Markit.

The Warehouse was up 3c to $3.63.

And in the currency markets: the New Zealand dollar was at nearly six year lows. At 12.15pm, it was trading at 51.32 US cents, 78.96 Australian cents, 35.92 pence, 46.07 yen and 0.3961 euro. The Trade Weighted Index was at 51.74.

The Australian share market opened about 1% lower. At 1013 AEDT, the S&P/ASX200 index was down 38.7 points, or 1.1%, at 3,487.5, while the All Ordinaries index fell 40.1 points, or 1.16%, to 3,421.2.

On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the March share price index contract was 75 points lower at 3,441 on a volume of 6,386 contracts.