US policies spook NZ traders into sell-off
Index falls along with global markets
New Zealand shares fell, joining a global sell-off as US President Donald Trump spooked markets with his ad hoc policy decisions.
Meridian Energy, Warehouse Group Air New Zealand
and
declined. The S&P/NZX50 Index dropped 34.8 points, or 0.5 percent, to 7050.76. Within the index, 30 stocks fell, 14 rose and six were unchanged. Turnover was $106.7 million
Asian markets were weaker as the impact of US President Donald Trump’s travel ban on refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, alongside his firing of attorney-general Sally Yates, worried investors, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 0.6 per cent overnight, its biggest fall in a month. At 5:15pm (NZ time), Japan’s Nikkei 400 was down 1.4 per cent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index was down 0.7 per cent.
“The market’s had a bit of a run from its mid-December lows, we’d had a nice little bounce, so maybe some people are taking money off the table,” said James Smalley, director at Hamilton Hindin Greene.
“It’s probably just a defensive tactic, you never know what Mr Trump’s going to pull out of the hat, and light volumes exacerbate the selling.”
“We may be back in the old trend of following the movement but not the magnitude of the move. It’s one of those low-volume, early-week days where there’s not a lot to move the market, people are waiting for the imminent reporting season in a fortnight for some reads going forward.”
led the index lower, falling 4 per cent to $2.63. The electricity generator-retailer has lost its dispute with the Wellington City Council over $1.2 million in rates paid for its wind farms, with the High Court ruling the council acted lawfully in how it calculated the bill.
Meridian Energy Warehouse Group
declined 3.7 per cent to $2.62. In December, NZ’s largest publicly listed retailer said profit may fall up to 15 per cent in the first half of its financial year on a weaker-than-expected run-up to Christmas.
“The stock had had a reasonable bounce up towards the end of last year, that trading update which obviously disappointed the market before Christmas is obviously continuing to sell down. It’s wiped out the whole of year’s gains, it’s been a reasonably precipitous fall from grace,” Smalley said.
fell 2.8 per cent to $2.10,
Air NZ SkyCity Energy
$7.28.
Entertainment Heartland Bank Group Z
dropped 2.3 per cent to $3.78 and was down 2.3 per cent to was the best performer, up 1.3 per cent to $1.58, and gained 1.3 per cent to
Metlifecare
$5.58.
Sky Network Oceania Natural Television
dropped 0.9 per cent to $4.64. It will pay an early interim dividend ahead of the planned merger with Vodafone NZ and raise the cash portion of its acquisition of the telecommunications carrier to reflect a bigger return than its agreement provided for. Outside the benchmark index,
was unchanged at $1.94. The honey and noni juice products maker’s third-quarter revenue growth stalled as an unstable grey market in China prompted it to rethink its distribution into the world’s most populous nation.
Veritas Investments
was unchanged at 15 cents. The food and beverage investor has been given a second extension, until Thursday, to either sell or begin winding up its Nosh food supermarkets by its lender, ANZ. It took on a $5m funding line with ANZ to buy the Nosh stores in 2014 but has struggled to make them profitable.