New Zealand shares ended higher on Wednesday as most Asian markets saw gains following a Tuesday rally in Wall Street shares, helped by soaring tech stocks.
The S&P/NZX 50 Index rose 0.68% or 93.72 points to close at 13,997.18.
On Tuesday, the Nasdaq Composite gained 2.6%, the S&P 500 added 1.8% while the Dow Jones increased by 1.7%.
On the domestic front, New Zealand's seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate rose to 5.6% in the June quarter from 5.4% in the March quarter, data from Stats NZ showed.
Also, a total of 40,504 metric tonnes (MT) of products were sold during the Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auction held on Tuesday, with supply ranging from 37,045 to 44,702 MT, according to data from the trading platform.
Further, the ANZ World Commodity Price Index fell 3.9% month over month in July, the largest monthly fall since November 2022, according to a report from ANZ Research.
Meanwhile, New Zealand recorded NZ$16.1 billion of new lending in June, up 1.7% from May and over 7% higher compared with the same month a year earlier, according to data by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
In corporate news, Chorus (NZE:CNU, ASX:CNU) partnered with Nokia to launch TimeSync, a national network-based precision timing service in New Zealand to support critical infrastructure, the telecommunications infrastructure company said in a statement on Tuesday.
RUA Gold (NZE:RGI) received the required regulatory approval to begin exploration drilling at its Glamorgan epithermal gold project in New Zealand's Hauraki Goldfield.