New Zealand's share market ignored a weak finish on Wall Street and concerns about China to open firmer, boosted by a string of strong corporate earnings.
In the first few minutes of trade today, the S&P/NZX50 index was up 28 points (0.5%), led by post-result gains from Air New Zealand, Ebos and Metlifecare.
Overnight, China's moves to shore up its economy helped lend support to European share markets but America's Dow Jones Index swung through a wide range to end lower.
"We might buck the trend today but I would not be surprised to see some shakiness in other markets across the region," Mark Lister at Craigs Investment Partners said.
Air New Zealand, after reporting a 24% lift in net profit to $327 million, saw its share price rally by 9.5 cents to $2.74.
China's central bank cut official interest rates on Tuesday and lowered the amount of reserves banks must hold as it tried to shore up a faltering economy and plunging share market.
The People's Bank of China said it was cutting the one-year benchmark bank lending rate by 25 basis points to 4.6%, reducing one-year benchmark deposit rates by the same amount, and cutting reserve requirements by 50 basis points to 18% for most big banks.
The New Zealand sharemarket ended yesterday's session with a slight gain after being down by 2.5% at one point, helped in part by a strong performance on the Australian share market, which closed 2.6% higher.
China's moves assisted confidence in the main European markets, with Britain's FTSE100 index rising by 3% and Germany's DAX index gaining 5%.
Closer to China, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index firmed by 0.7%, but the market at the centre of it all, Shanghai, fell sharply again - this time 7.6% after dropping by 8% on Monday.
Trading on Wall Street was extremely volatile, with the Dow Jones industrial index firming at one point by 440 points, only to lose all its gains and finish 1.3% down as investors re-assessed their risks.
"It's really been a re-pricing of equity risk that is occurring," Andrew Bascand, managing director and portfolio manager at Harvour Asset Management, said.
"As a result we have had a marking down of equities prices around the world ... We can't really expect the markets to bounce back to where they were."
In the currency market, the New Zealand dollar stabilised following a period of volatile trading as investor confidence about weakness in China abated.
The dollar slipped to US64.78c from US64.97c at 5pm yesterday, having traded between 62.44c and 67.07c over the past five days.
- By Jamie Gray, NZME News Service business reporter, additional reporting: BusinessDesk
