New Zealand shares sank nearly 0.5 percent today, but withstood falls in the order of 2 percent seen offshore after hefty declines on Wall Street.
The benchmark NZSX-50 Index closed down 15.03 points at 3319.1, after dropping 17 points yesterday. Turnover totalled a hefty $269.9 million.
"Reasonable sort of performance, no particular standouts,'' said First NZ Capital director Philip Hunter, noting the New Zealand market had outperformed Australia by a large margin.
That was despite blue chip Fletcher Building's 4 percent decline, with the building supplies and construction stock giving up to profit-taking some of the strong gains seen in recent days.
Top stock Telecom was down 3c at a fresh 15-year low of 322, Fletcher Building was down 30c at 680, and Contact Energy rose 4c to 863 after its majority owner Origin Energy rebuffed a $A13.8 billion takeover offer from BG Group.
There was no direct effect on Contact and no surprise, as it was consistent with what Origin had been saying, Mr Hunter said.
Fisher & Paykel Appliances rose 3c to 188, after yesterday's 24c plunge on news of the short term cost of moving manufacturing offshore and warning of a fall in interim profit.
"Probably an overreaction yesterday in the market so just retracing some of that,'' he said.
Rural services company PGG Wrightson was up 4c at 284 after posting an 80 percent increase in annual net profit to $73.2 million on improvements across the board, and indicating a solid result this year.
F&P Healthcare rose 7c to 295, Sky City was up a cent at 356, Sky TV rose 3c to 503, Infratil gained 4c to 220, and Auckland International Airport fell a cent to 198.
AMP Office Trust rose a cent to 107 after the property investor said rising rental income helped lift annual operating profit by 27 percent to $52.2 million.
Mainfreight lost 4c to 714, Freightways was down a cent at 329, The Warehouse fell 2c to 341, and Pike River Coal lost 3c to 176.
NZ Oil and Gas was up 2c at 148, Hallenstein Glasson rose 2c to 285, Air New Zealand was up a cent at 126, and TrustPower jumped 16c to 786.
Among dual-listed stocks, ANZ was down 62c at 2007, Westpac fell 45c to 2755, Lion Nathan lost 31c to 1069, and AMP fell 44c to 791.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Index was down 2 percent at 4883, weighed down by weak financial services companies and miners, while Japan's Nikkei share average fell 2.5 percent.
Earlier, US stocks sank as the prospect of more losses from the mortgage crisis hurt the shares of banks and the two biggest home finance providers, pushing all three major indexes down.