Wellington, Feb 10 NZPA - A solid start by Sky TV helped the New Zealand sharemarket to a small gain in early trading today, but within about 10 minutes of opening the market was flat.

After falling 10c yesterday, SkyTV was up 5c in early trading, but shortly after the market opened the gain was pared to 2c, taking the stock to 422.

Several other stocks also gained 2c early, including Sky City which was at 304, Ryman Healthcare at 140, NZX at 575, and Contact Energy at 670.

Market heavyweight Telecom was down 1c early to 268, on top of a 1c fall yesterday. It was announced yesterday that Hutchison Telecommunications, in which Telecom has a 10 percent stake, is to merge into a 50/50 joint venture with Vodafone Australia.

Around 10.20am the benchmark NZSX-50 index was down just 0.43 points to 2766.13, having closed down 6.9 points yesterday.

Among the bigger early losers, Ebos Group was down 10c to 430, while dual-listed bank ANZ was down 10c to 1580, although Westpac rose 4c to 2094.

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was down 2c to 335, with The Warehouse also down 2c, to 348.

In the United States, the Dow and Nasdaq dipped as falling oil prices hurt energy shares and a brokerage raised concerns about Coca-Cola Co and PepsiCo, blunting a rise in financial stocks on hopes a bailout will spare shareholders.

The Dow Jones industrial average provisionally eased 0.1 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 0.1 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.2 points.

NZPA WGT Reuters mjd nb