Wellington, June 15 NZPA - The New Zealand sharemarket edged up in early trading, after the Dow Jones industrial average in the United States moved into positive territory for the year for the first time since early January.

Around 10.15am the benchmark NZSX-50 index was up 4.72 points to 2814.54. On Friday the index rose 13.3 points during a week in which it was stuck in a range of about 40 points below 2835.

Top stock Telecom was up 2c to 257 early, while Fletcher Building was unchanged on 685 after rising 10c on Friday when $12 million worth of its shares traded. Contact Energy was down 2c early to 587 after a 20c gain on Friday.

Among shares rising early today, Mainfreight lifted 3c to 415, Tower gained 2c to 183, Sky City lifted 2c to 274, and NZ Farming Systems Uruguay was up 2c to 52. Dual-listed ANZ was up 20c to 2180, while APN News gained 3c to 198.

In the US the Dow was lifted on Friday (local time) by defensive sectors such as pharmaceuticals, while a disappointing outlook from National Semiconductor weighed on technology stocks.

The Dow gained 0.3 percent to 8799.26, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 0.1 percent to 946.21, the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 0.2 percent to 1858.80.

For the week, the Dow gained 0.4 percent, the S&P 500 added 0.7 percent and the Nasdaq rose 0.5 percent. For the year, the blue-chip Dow average is up 0.3 percent.