The New Zealand sharemarket started the year on the back foot, taking its lead from offshore where Wall Street stocks suffered a technology-led hangover after a buoyant end to 2023.

The S&P/NZX 50 Index had
a generally weak trading session and closed at 11,730.13, down 40.36 points or 0.34 per cent after reaching an intraday low of 11,695.01.

Mark Lister of Craigs Investment Partners said it was unsurprising the market was off the boil given the negative leads from overseas markets following such a strong rally at the back end of last year.

“Even our market rallied almost 9.5 per cent in those last two months, finishing the year with a nine-week winning streak. You’d have to go back four and a half years to find the same sort of run.

“Against that backdrop, no one is going to be too surprised by a bit of weakness to start the year off. It’s also a quiet time in terms of turnover and activity.”

In the US, the Nasdaq closed down 1.6 per cent for its weakest performance since October 26 while the blue-chip S&P 500 ended down 0.6 per cent — its poorest day in almost a fortnight.

Chipmakers and Apple headlined the tech fallers with the latter dropping 3.6 per cent after Barclays analysts downgraded it to the equivalent of a “sell” rating — only the company’s second such rating from analysts in at least two years.

Here at home, there were 50 gainers and 72 decliners over the whole market on light volumes of 23.68 million share transactions worth $56.95m.

On the upside, investment company Infratil stood out, closing the day up 9c, or 0.9 per cent, at $10.12.

The company released its December quarter independent valuation of its investment in CDC Data Centres, showing an increase of A$133 million over the three months. Infratil’s 48.24 per cent investment is now valued at between A$3,736 million and A$4,335 million and the company put the uplift down to strong progress CDC has made securing new customer contracts.

Retirement village operator Arvida Group, up 9c (8.18 per cent) at $1.19, Briscoe Group, up 18c (4.03 per cent) at $4.65, Ebos, up 72c (2.03 per cent) at $36.22 and Seeka, up 15c (5.88 per cent) at $2.70 also did well under the circumstances.

Elsewhere it was largely red ink.

The a2 Milk Company slipped 11c, or 2.39 per cent, to $4.49. Lister said that could be the result of further soft economic data out of China where manufacturing activity shrank for a third straight month in December and weakened more than expected.

He noted other local companies with exposure to China also fell today, including Scales Corp – down 10c, or 3.35 per cent, to $3.35 – and Port of Tauranga – down 15c, or 2.68 per cent, to $5.45.

Hospitality company Good Spirits, which said its loan from Pacific Dawn was in default and now on call, had its shares placed in a trading halt.

Energy companies were generally softer, with Meridian down 10c (1.81 per cent) at $5.44 and Genesis down 4c (1.6 per cent) at $2.46. Mercury was unchanged at $6.60.

Among the retailers, The Warehouse shed 3c, or 1.86 per cent, to $1.58 after the stock fell almost 40 per cent last year.

The company’s half-year result is not due until late March when shareholders will get an idea of how Christmas sales performed, including at subsidiary Torpedo 7 which has been under pressure as the retailer’s worst-performing brand.