Wellington, March 18 NZPA - A robust performance on Wall Street spurred bargain hunters on the New Zealand sharemarket to push the NZX 50 index up 41.6 points to 2606.3, a lift of 1.6 percent.

The benchmark index rose 20.4 points on Tuesday and 20.9 points on Monday.

Fletcher Building gained 21c early, on top of a 15c gain yesterday, and kept rising through the day to finish 35c up (6.14 percent) at $6.05.

Contact Energy lifted 19c (3.3pc) to $5.94.

The biggest listed company, Telecom rose 7c on Tuesday and today lifted another 5c (2.13pc) to $2.40.

Dual-listed bank Westpac also had a good day, rising 58c (2.67pc) to $22.28.

Sky City Entertainment gained 3c to $2.78, and Sky TV rose 8c (2.2pc) to 385.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances racked up one of the biggest drops, down 4c (-8.7pc) to 42c.

Across the Tasman, Australian shares rose to a one-month high - led by bank stocks such as Commonwealth Bank - but were flattened by significant losses in global miners such as Rio Tinto to a rise of only 0.04 percent.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index climbed 21.2 points to 3,473.1 by lunchtime, above its one-month high of 3451.9 points on Tuesday, but finished up only 1.5 points at 3453.2 points. In the US, stocks were boosted by an unexpected leap in housing starts which pushed Home Depot and other retailers higher, while bullish comments from a broker on Cisco Systems helped technology shares rebound.

A nearly 4 percent rise in US crude oil futures boosted energy shares.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 2.5 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index up 3.2 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index up 4.1 percent.

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