Stocks on Wall Street closed slightly higher on Thursday. Earlier, there was a brief surge after new data showed home sales rose by 9.6% in July, for the fourth consecutive month.
The Dow Jones Index closed up 4 points to 9543.
The Nasdaq Composite closed up 2 points at 2024.
Europe's main stock indices fell on Wednesday: the FTSE100 in London slipped 0.5%, the DAX in Frankfurt closed down 0.6% and the CAC-40 in Paris fell 0.3%.
Earlier, stocks in Japan rose to the highest level in almost 11 months, with the Nikkei-225 index gaining 1.3%.
The Australian 200 Index closed up 48 points, or 1.1%, to 4454.
The NZX 50 closed up 10 points, or 0.3%, to 3090 on turnover of $58 million on Wednesday.
At 8.15am on Thursday, the New Zealand dollar was trading at 68.12 US cents, 82.26 Australian cents, 41.95 pence, 64.15 yen and 0.4779 euro. The Trade Weighted Index was at 63.51.
