The New Zealand sharemarket fell on opening in what is likely to be the first taste of the bumpy week ahead for global markets after they were surprised by the latest escalation of the US-China trade war.
An hour and a half into trading Monday, the NZX 50 index had fallen more than 1.5 percent.
US markets were rocked at the end of last week by the dramatic escalation of the trade spat, with China announcing additional tariffs on US products, and US President Donald Trump demanding American companies find alternatives to doing business with China.
After markets closed for the weekend, the US upped the ante again with a further 5 percent tariff on some $550 billion of Chinese goods.
OANDA senior market analyst Jeffrey Halley told the BBC the uncertainty has investors looking for safe havens.
“We’ve already seen the yen rallying this morning in early twilight zone trading, gold has opened up a lot higher too, I think there’ll be a lot of flow into gold, into Swiss francs and into yen over the course of this day and that’s a trend that’s going to continue over the course of the week.”
SOURCE: RNZ
Featured Image –RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
