KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand dollar took its lead from global markets today, ignoring news that the United States would join New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Brunei in the P4 trade deal.
At 8am today it was buying US69.27c but by 5pm it had dropped to 68.98c.
During the day it slid down to US68.72, struggled up half a cent to US69.23, before giving up the ghost to slide down under US69c at 5pm.
There is some international scepticism about the impact of the US$700 billion ($103 trillion) bailout package in the US, aimed at easing the global credit crisis. Doubters question how it can restore confidence in the US financial system when it is in a recession. The package involves the US Treasury buying mortgage-related bad debts from financial firms, including US subsidiaries of foreign banks.
Bank of New Zealand currency strategist Danica Hampton said the kiwi was still taking its cues from those global markets.
It slid from overnight peaks which had seen it reach three-week highs against the greenback.
Ms Hampton said there was still a lot of uncertainty, and markets had pretty much ignored the P4 free trade pact news, announced yesterday, which had the Government speculating it could be worth $1 billion to New Zealand.
"You would think that would be relatively positive for the currency from a fundamental perspective, but people aren't really focusing on fundamentals at the moment, they really are just concerned about what Asian equities and Australian equities are doing."
While it slid against the greenback, the NZ dollar was also weaker against the Japanese yen at 5pm, down to 72.69 from 72.82 at 8am.
It rose against the Australian dollar, finishing at A82.07c, up from A81.62c. The kiwi changed little against the euro, at 5pm it was at 0.4664, down from 0.4665. The trade weighted index was 64.17.
Currency rates:
NZ dlr/US dlr US68.98c US68.69c
NZ dlr/Aust dlr A82.07c A82.70c
NZ dlr/euro 0.4664 0.4739
NZ dlr/yen 72.69 73.20
NZ dlr/stg 37.16p 37.53p
NZ TWI 64.17 64.60
Australian dollar US84.06c US83.02c
Euro/US dollar 1.4790 1.4490
US dollar/yen 105.40 106.60
- NZPA
