Kiwi steady in quiet start to week

Photo / Brett Phibbs

The New Zealand dollar remained subdued yesterday after a quiet start to the week's trading.

BNZ said it expected the NZ dollar to spend most of the week trading within the range of US72c to US74c.

"It has been a relatively quiet start to the week, we had a reasonably bullish opening. For the most part the kiwi's really just traded in line with what's been seen with the euro and the aussie," said BNZ strategist Mike Jones.

The NZ dollar would probably tread water until key US manufacturing data was released later this week, he said.

The NZ dollar was little changed at US73.41c at 5pm from US73.39c at 8am and US72.78c at 5pm on Friday. It had reached an eight-month high of US74.18c last week.

Rankin Treasury said that overall the NZ dollar remained within recent ranges.

"Expectations remain high that the US74c level will be a bridge too far for the NZ dollar, but we are not in that camp and we expect this level to give way to see the NZ dollar march on higher toward US75.50c," the firm said.

Against the Australian dollar the NZ dollar was at A76.64c at 5pm from A76.52c at 8am and A76.59c at 5pm on Friday.

The kiwi slipped to 61.82 at 5pm from 61.98 at the same time on Friday, while the trade weighted index edged up to 66.49 from 66.39 on Friday.

- NZPA