Mediaboss Marketing

RICHARD MEADOWS

The New Zealand sharemarket rose today, following offshore leads across the Tasman and in Asia to shrug off the latest round of bad news out of Europe.

The NZX50 index rose 0.46 per cent, or 16.04 points, to 3,478.29. Within the index, 16 stocks rose and 19 fell. Fisher & Paykel Appliances led gainers, and Rakon fell.

First NZ Capital head of institutional equities James Lee said the Australian market had performed strongly and the wider Asia region was also on the rise.

"We've seen some of the leaders in Aussies turn around from being down one per cent to being up half a per cent, and New Zealand's just followed suit", he said.

The Hong Kong Hang Seng exchange closed 158.87 points higher, or 0.85 per cent, while the Japanese Nikkei was recently up 0.65 per cent.

There was no trading in the United States overnight due to the observation of Memorial Day. However, news that the heavily indebted Spanish government planned to effectively nationalise its third largest lender failed to put a damper on local markets.

"It didn't really affect US/European markets last night either- that'd be the key thing", Lee said. "Until we see it affect the local markets, i.e. the European market, it's not going to really affect our market."

Bluechip stocks Fletcher Building and Telecom were the two main leaders on the day, he said, with no decliners of any real significance.

"A point here and a point there- but most of the market's up on the day."

More:
NZX follows offshore leads to rise