Heavy trading on NZX with index re-weightings heightening activity

The S&P/NZX Index increased 37.77 points, or 0.4 percent, to 9,473.27. Within the index, 32 stocks rose, 10 fell, and eight were unchanged. Turnover was $407.1 million, of which Spark accounted for $64.2 million and Contact Energy contributed $57.2 million.

Greg Smith, head of research at Fat Prophets, said global investor sentiment seemed to have become relatively upbeat, with US markets at four-month highs and the likely delay to Brexit pushing out some uncertainty in financial markets for the time being.

"Weaker Chinese data this week seems to have been taken in its stride and generally the optimists are outweighing the pessimists," he said.

The stock market operator extended the adjustment session of local trading to allow for the quarterly rebalancing of the S&P/NZX indices and the FTSE Russell index, in which some stocks are added and removed to the benchmarks for passive investment vehicles. More than 104 million shares were traded today, more than three times the 90-day average of 28.1 million.