Craigs Investment Partners investment adviser Peter McIntyre said while the market finished down, it was "actually quite a quiet day for our exchange as far as volume is concerned".
"If I put it into context with regards to how other Asia-Pacific indexes have performed, New Zealand’s done well," Mr McIntyre said yesterday.
"Even though we have had a pullback, it’s not as bad as what other indexes in the Asia-Pacific region have experienced.
"If there had been huge amounts of volume and the market had declined further, I think investors would probably be a little bit concerned, but, really, trading volumes were relatively ‘benign’, to use a term, for the way the market traded today."
He believed a lot of institutional investors would sit on the sidelines and wait to see how the present situation played out.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell more than 10% yesterday, Mr McIntyre said.
The Korean market was down more than 5%.
United States President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging "Liberation Day" tariffs shocked markets and on Friday in the US there was a further pullback in equity prices and indexes.
The US market had now pulled back nearly 20%. Over the past several decades, when markets retreated, that figure marked "the average pullback point".
"I think the key here is just how much noise we have with countries that trade with the US and how much retaliation or how much negotiation goes on.
"That’s the 64-million-dollar question.
Were there going to be impasses or "is there going to be some leniency towards some countries?", Mr McIntyre said.
"But, certainly, when China poked its head above the parapet and said, ‘Well, no. We’re going to retaliate’, that really did spook the markets.
"So, not a great day here in New Zealand, but also not necessarily as bad as it has been elsewhere."
The share prices of seven dominant tech companies that have played a significant role in driving market growth — the so-called Magnificent Seven (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla) — had come back the most.
All sectors had been sold off to some degree — "even gold, which is considered to be a safe haven" — but a lot of those funds had tended to move into the bond market, Mr McIntyre said.
New Zealand stocks were infrastructure-related — property and energy companies, generator-retailers dominated here — and the local market was not necessarily as exposed as others.
But futures were weak in the US, which gave an indication of where the market would open today, he said.
International media reported yesterday Mr Trump was not concerned about the market losses that had already wiped out nearly $US6trillion ($NZ10.7trillion) in value from US stocks.
"I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," he reportedly said to reporters on Air Force One yesterday.
Mr Trump said he had spoken to leaders in Europe and Asia seeking to lift tariffs on their countries.
RNZ reported Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said New Zealand was "incredibly well-positioned" to deal with Mr Trump’s global tariffs.
Asked how concerned he was about the New Zealand sharemarket, Mr Luxon said it was a "really anxious time for everyone around the world and people are unsure about what’s coming next".
"But the reality is New Zealand is incredibly well-positioned relative to other countries to deal with this environment.
"It’s not what we want, but actually, we can — we will — continue to act in our own national interests.
"We’ll continue to build our opportunities for New Zealand businesses all around the world."
In the US, Wall Street began its new trading week at 1.30am today, New Zealand time.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the first major central bank to meet since the tariff bombshell, is expected to cut rates tomorrow in what economists say could be the first of several this year.
