Currency: Busy end to interesting week for NZ dollar

The New Zealand dollar regained some lost ground against the US dollar today, and looked ready to eye 60 US cents next week.

The kiwi has slid from more than US60c on Monday to US58.07c at 5pm yesterday as part of a generalised sell-off of dollar bloc currencies that include the Australian and Canadian dollars.

At 5pm the kiwi was up almost 1US cent to buy US58.98c, while the Australian dollar made a less spectacular gain to US65.88c from US65.23c.

ANZ Investment Bank chief foreign exchange dealer Murray Hindley said the New Zealand market had seen reasonable volume through today.

"There's been a bit of interest internally and externally, as some of the exporters have certainly covered on some of the dips in the last two days," Mr Hindley said.

"It's been an interesting week, that's for sure."

Today's range was US58.64c and US59.10c, with an overnight range expected of US58.60c and US59.20c.

"The way it's bounced off the low we saw on Thursday of US57.55c, I think there's another chance we'll look back at US60c again, next week," he said.

In Tokyo today the euro fell on a media report that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder wanted the European Central Bank (ECB) to intervene to weaken its currency.

In an interview in Friday's edition of the Financial Times, Schroeder issued what the paper described as "a veiled call" for the ECB to intervene in the currency markets to reduce the value of the euro and help European exports.

By 5pm in Wellington the euro eased to $US1.1325, compared with $US1.1341 at yesterday's close, while the US dollar was fetching 117.88 (117.81).

On the crosses at 5pm the kiwi was buying A89.52c (A89.03c yesterday), 0.5206 euro (0.5120), 69.53 yen (69.41), 36.05 pence (35.52), and 0.8073 Swiss francs.

The monetary conditions index was at plus 297 (230), the trade-weighted index was at 62.90 (62.04), and 90-day bank bill yields were at 5.13 per cent (5.15).

In the bond market, the February 2005 yields were at 4.83 per cent (4.84), November 2006s were at 4.98 per cent (5.01), and the November 2011s were at 5.35 per cent (5.38).

- NZPA