Wellington, April 18 NZPA - Having gained more than 60c in the past three days, Contact Energy was taking a breather in early trade today.

Shortly after the sharemarket opened, Contact shares were down 7c to 903 in an easing market. Early this week Contact announced it had bought two gas turbine units to be fired up during periods of peak electricity demand.

Around 10.15am today the benchmark NZSX-50 index was down 4.82 points to 3564.12, after closing up 52.3 points yesterday.

After jumping 34c yesterday on news it was closing plants in Dunedin, Brisbane and California and relocating manufacturing to cheaper locations in Thailand, Mexico and Italy, F&P Appliances was unchanged early today at 254.

Top stock Telecom was down 3c to 363, following a 2c fall yesterday, with investors showing caution about plans outlined last week involving lower dividends and higher spending. No 2 stock Fletcher Building was down 1c today to 835.

The weak opening in this country followed a flat performance on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones industrial average and the S 500 closing little changed.

A strong performance by IBM took the sting out of cautious outlooks from eBay and United Technologies, allowing investors to hold onto gains racked up in a huge rally the previous session.

But the Nasdaq closed lower, hurt by eBay shares, which fell 3.5 percent after the company said the slowing economy was hurting its online auction business.

In this country Sky TV was up 5c early to 470, Rakon was up 3c to 316, Michael Hill was up 4c to 920, and Freightways was up 4c to 351.

Among falling stocks was Fisher Paykel Healthcare was down 2c to 278, Auckland Airport down 2c to 220, Cavalier down 2c to 268, and Sky City down 2c to 393.In the US the Dow eked out a gain of 0.01 percent to end at 12,620.49. The Standard Poor's 500 Index crept up 0.06 percent to close at 1365.56. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.35 percent to end at 2341.83.

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