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Highlights
- New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index fell 0.3% on Monday.
- Air New Zealand’s shares dwindled 22.18% to NZ$0.905 on Monday due to an error made by NZX in pricing AIR’s shares and rights.
- Gold and oil prices remained steady.
The New Zealand sharemarket began the week at a loss amid subdued global sentiment over the continued conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has pushed up oil prices and has added significant ambiguity to the global economic outlook.
New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index fell 0.3% on Monday and ended the day at 12,053.19 points. The decline was led by IT and financial stocks over the Russia-Ukraine crisis and inflation concerns.
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Oceania Healthcare’s shares gained 4.67% on Monday to end at NZ$1.12. In comparison, Air New Zealand’s shares dwindled 22.18% to NZ$0.905 by the end of the trading session. The national carrier plans to raise NZ$1.2 billion from shareholders and the rights for the same were to begin today but an error made by the NZX in pricing AIR’s shares and rights forced the airline’s rights to undergo a trading halt for a short time during the day. Auckland Airport was also down 1.1% at NZ$7.665.
Top stock Fisher & Paykel closed up 0.82% at NZ$24.7. Westpac shares slid 0.15% to NZ$25.94, ANZ fell 0.98% to NZ$29.3, Spark was up by 1.09% at NZ$4.65 and Mainfreight was down 2.1% to NZ$81.5.
Global stocks gained in Friday’s session
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.4% to 34818.28, the S&P 500 gained 0.34% to 4545.87 and the NASDAQ Composite added 0.3% to 14261.5 on Friday. The positive session came even after US’s employment report showed lower job numbers than estimated numbers for March.
Japan’s Nikkei added 0.1% on Friday. The FTSE 100 was trading up by 0.4% at the time of writing.
Gold Prices steady
Gold prices traded lower on Friday due to a rise in US bond yields and expectations of a rate hike by The US Fed. After trading lower in the early trading session on Monday, spot gold prices were up by 0.19% at US$1929.07 per ounce, at the time of writing.
Market expectations that the Fed will take a more aggressive policy approach to confront persistent high inflation were strengthened by the US monthly employment data released on Friday. As a result, the yield on 2-year US government bond, which is very sensitive to rate rise forecasts, reached a 3-year peak, posing a challenge for gold.
Oil prices stabilised
Crude oil prices have weakened by roughly 13% in the previous week. The Brent oil futures were up by 0.88% to US$105.31 per barrel while US West Texas Intermediate crude was at US$100 a barrel, up by 0.76%, at the time of writing.
This came due to supply hopes propelled by a truce between the UAE and Iran-aligned Houthi group, which would stop military operations on the border. This would ease some concerns about potential supply issues.
The NZD/USD pair was trading near 0.14% higher at 0.6938, at the time of writing.
Global crypto market down
Most of the cryptocurrencies traded in red on 30 March. The global crypto market cap stood at US$2.16 trillion, down by 0.15% over the previous day, at the time of writing. Bitcoin (BTC) is down 0.44% to US$46,176.49 while Ethereum is up 0.41% at US$3504.8 in the last 24 hours.