KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand dollar had a heavy feel today and it drifted down toward support levels.
The jobs summit is not a market mover so the focus in the currency market was, as usual, on global events and movements in equity markets.
The NZ dollar was trading at US50.56c at 5pm from US51.10c at 8am and US50.15c at 5pm yesterday.
"We have found relatively solid support around US50.50c all this week," said BNZ currency strategist Danica Hampton.
"There is pretty major support there," she said.
Investors were squaring positions at month-end but the flows were in "dribs and drabs".
The yen rose off three-month lows on squaring up of US dollar positions.
Next week there is little on the New Zealand economic calendar but there are many events offshore, including central bank decisions in Europe and Australia and non-farm payroll data in the US.
"The kiwi is just going to be vented around with global sentiment," she said.
The kiwi reached its highest level against the Japanese currency in more than five weeks on Thursday night, around 50.50 yen, but by today's local close was 49.35 from 50.07 at 5pm yesterday.
The NZ dollar was down against the European currency, slipping to 0.3975 euro at 5pm from 0.4015 at yesterday's local close.
Against the Australian dollar, the kiwi dropped to A78.35c from A78.65c yesterday. Again this was said to be on position-squaring.
The trade weighted index was 51.97 from 52.48.
- NZPA
