The New Zealand sharemarket fell today in line with a trend in Asian markets.
The benchmark NZX-50 index closed down 20.857 points, or 0.68 percent, to 3045.719. Turnover was worth $86 million. There were 29 rises and 46 falls among the 114 stocks traded.
"A lot of the Asian markets are down and the Chinese market is down after being closed for three days for a holiday," said Ross Cuthbert, adviser at Craigs Investment Partners.
Guinness Peat Group closed on its session low, down 3c at 63c. Mr Cuthbert said the market continued to be underwhelmed by the company's demerger proposal.
"I think value will be unlocked in time but realistically it is probably two years away. The market is impatient for that value to be returned and it is weighing on the share price," he said.
SkyTV fell 7c to $4.95, with brokers saying it may have been buoyed earlier by corporate activity in the sector as News Corp sought to take control of BSkyB, and that speculation was now receding.
Telecom fell 3c to $1.86, having reached its highest level in nearly three weeks during trading yesterday at $1.94, as the stock tries to pull away from its record low of $1.79, touched last week.
Among other top stocks, Contact Energy was down 7c to $5.77 after releasing its May operational report. NZX rose 1c to $1.49 on a day of its annual meeting.
Fletcher Building rose 3c to $8.21 after being unchanged in early trading.
Goodman Fielder rose 4c to $1.70 and said after the market closed that it had raised $A350 million in the United States.
Infratil eased 1c to $1.60, Mainfreight eased 5c to $6.15 and Freightways eased 6c to $2.82. Auckland Airport rose 3c to $1.90 and APN News rose 4c to $2.76.
Methven rose 4c to $1.68 and Pike River Coal rose 2c to 92c. The Warehouse rose 4c to $3.60 and Hellaby eased 5c to $1.60.
Tenon rose 10c to $1.05 and Cavalier Carpets fell 10c to $2.50.
In the US, stocks finished flat as cautious comments from FedEx and the weak housing market data overshadowed a surge in industrial production.
Investors were caught off guard after package company FedEx Corp, deemed an economic bellwether because it serves a wide range of industries, said higher costs would constrain 2011 earnings.
The US government said housing starts fell more than expected in May, underscoring the uneven nature of the economic recovery and casting a shadow over better-than-expected industrial production data for the same month.
The Dow Jones industrial average added 0.05 percent to 10,409.46, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index edged down just 0.06 percent to 1114.61, and the Nasdaq Composite Index inched up just 0.05 of a point to 2305.93.
