Stocks on Wall Street and the US dollar fell on Monday in a seesaw session after manufacturing activity in May in the United States contracted for the first time in six months.
The Dow Jones Index rose by 138 points, almost 1%, to 15,254 due to a jump in shares of drug maker Merck Co.
Intel Corp helped the Nasdaq turn positive in the final hour of trading. The Nasdaq Composite was up 9 points, at 3465.
Earlier in Europe: the FTSE 100 in London was down 0.88%, the DAX in Frankfurt was down 0.76% and the CAC-40 was down 0.71%.
The Australian 200 Index closed down 38 points, or 0.8% at 4,888 on Monday.
The NZX 50 closed on Friday up 41 points, almost 1%, at 4,511 . It was closed on Monday.
At 8.30am onTuesday, the New Zealand dollar was trading at 80.83 US cents, 82.79 Australian cents, 52.77 pence, 80.42 yen and 0.6183 euro. The Trade Weighted Index was at 75.59.
Brent crude oil was trading at $US102 per barrel and gold was trading at $US1411.14 per ounce.
