Under pressure from fears about the stability of the United States financial system, the New Zealand sharemarket fell 2.5% when the market opened on Tuesday morning.
By noon, the NZX 50 index was down 95 points, or 2.9%, to 3224. The index closed for the day down 92 points to 3227 on turnover of $125 million.
Telecom was down 13c to $2.80, while Contact Energy was down 20c to $8.70 and Fletcher Building was down 29c to $7.07. Sky City Entertainment Group down 8 cents to $3.57
The dollar was buying 65 US cents, 82.36 Australian cents, 36.25 pence, 67.85 yen and 0.4569 euro. The Trade Weighted Index was 61.92
The Australian sharemarket dropped almost 2% on Tuesday amid more turmoil in US financial markets.
A late rally among the main banks and gains in resources stocks kept the damage from the fallout from the Lehman Brothers collapse to a minimum.
The S&P/ASX200 index was down 66.9 points, or 1.39%, to 4750.8, while the All Ordinaries lost 75.2 points, or 1.54%, to 4799.8.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the September share price index contract was 58 points lower to 4769 on a volume of 122,131 contracts.
