Wellington, July 17 NZPA - The New Zealand sharemarket continued to gain in early trading today, following general positive sentiment around Asia and a four-day rally on United States markets.

Among leading shares, Telecom jumped 3c to 272, Fletcher Building rose 2c to 686, Contact rose 2c to 593 and Sky City fell 2c to 266.

"There was positive sentiment around Asia," said Stephen Wright at ASB Securities. The New Zealand market was in the middle of the pack in terms of reacting to Wall Street.

At 10.08am, the benchmark NZX-50 index was at 2810.486, up 8.971 points or 0.32 percent. This followed yesterday's 37.434 point gain.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances' share price increased almost 3 percent, up 2c to 69, Mainfreight rose 3c to 272, Rakon rose 1c to 145 and AMP rose 7c to 620.

Easing stocks were Tower which fell 1c to 170, Nuplex 1c to 168, Restaurant Brands 1c to 103 and Air New Zealand 1c to 90.

In the US, stocks rallied for a fourth day on Thursday after JPMorgan's strong results fed growing optimism about the quarterly earnings season and technology shares rose in anticipation of more good news.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 95.61 points, or 1.11 percent, to 8711.82.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 8.06 points, or 0.86 percent, to finish at 940.74, and has climbed 7 percent for the week so far.

The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 22.13 points, or 1.19 percent, to 1885.03.