International winds of uncertainty blow over NZ sharemarket
The New Zealand sharemarket was flat on Friday as the reporting season ended, with the market now beholden to ongoing international impacts.
Friday, March 7th 2025, 6:31PM
by BusinessDesk
The S&P/NZX 50 Index closed down 0.23% or 29.06 points, falling to 12,400, with 28,219,137 shares changing hands to the value of $110.17 million.
The S&P/NZX20 index closed at 7,390, down 0.30%, while the S&P/NZX10 index closed at 1,875.37, down 0.14%.
There were 41 gainers on the main board and 87 decliners.
'A very volatile week'
Auckland International Airport reported a decline, with its share price falling 1.72% to $8.01, down 14c.
Craigs Investment Partners investment director Mark Lister said investors across the board would likely be happy with the day’s result given the ongoing volatility.
“It’s been a very volatile week. The US, they’ve got one day to go, but they’re down 3.6% for the week, which is pretty rough,” Lister said.
“We’re down as well. We’re holding up better than the US market. But we’re always going to follow those international trends, and when you’ve got people nervous about tariffs and so forth and what they might mean for global activity in terms of slowing things down, then we go along for the ride.”
In more positive news, KMD Brands' share price rose 2.70% to $0.38, up 1c.
He said that now reporting season is over and there are no major economic releases for a period, the market is in “a bit of a lull”.
“I kind of feel like we’re just going to be beholden to some of those big global moves.”
More pain for Spark
Another stock of interest was Spark, with its share price falling 0.67% to $2.21.
“There’ll always be someone out there who will take a positive view on a company when it’s been beaten up and fallen heavily, but it’s difficult to know where the share price is headed from here.”
Wall Street stocks resumed their retreat, falling hard ahead of key US jobs data as markets shrugged off President Donald Trump’s latest moves to soften tariff actions.
On Thursday, Trump unveiled a temporary rollback to steep tariffs targeting Canada and Mexico, but the shift was not enough to spark a change in stock market activity.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 1% at 42.579.08 after spending the entire session in negative territory.
The broad-based S&P 500 slumped 1.8% to 5,738.52, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index sank 2.6% to 18,069.26.
Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth Management said the uncertainty around trade policy is “affecting the real economy,” dragging down consumer sentiment and business investment.
"The longer that goes on, the more the economy slows,” he said.
Large tech firms were among the bigger losers Thursday, including Netflix, down 8.5%; Tesla, down 5.6%; and Nvidia, down 5.7%.
– Additional reporting AFP
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