KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand dollar finished its local session near where it started, as traders waited for the Reserve Bank's interest rate decision on Thursday.
At 5pm today the kiwi was buying US76.18c, little changed from the US76.13c open and US76.35c at 5pm on Friday.
The New Zealand dollar lost ground against the greenback, which rose against the euro and yen during the weekend after a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss from Citigroup Inc eased worries about the United States financial sector.
Despite the US dollar's recovery, sentiment on the currency was still shaky, analysts said.
"We're getting lots of conflicting data. There seems to be no real consensus regarding the outlook for the US financial sector or the US economy as a whole," said Gareth Sylvester, a senior currency strategist at HiFX in San Francisco.
ANZ bank today said the NZ dollar had a relatively quiet finish to last week as it failed to push higher.
The Official Cash Rate decision on Thursday would be a "line ball call", and the Reserve Bank might well choose to buy some time to evaluate a developing economic picture, ANZ said.
The Reserve Bank would not want to build a bridge to a series of interest rate cuts without a clearer picture that the longer term inflation outlook was improving.
The kiwi was lower against the Australian dollar at A78.07c from the A78.28c local open, which was down on the A78.55c at 5pm on Friday.
The NZ dollar was at 81.35 yen from 81.41 at 8am and 81.09 on Friday, while against the euro it was down at 0.4798 from 0.4814 at Friday's local close.
The trade weighted index was 67.45 at 5pm from 67.59 on Friday.
Reuters currency rates:
NZ dlr/US dlr US76.18c US76.35c
NZ dlr/Aust dlr A78.07c A78.55c
NZ dlr/euro 0.4798 0.4814
NZ dlr/yen 81.35 81.09
NZ dlr/stg 38.19p 38.22p
NZ TWI 67.45 67.59
Australian dollar US97.56c US97.19c
Euro/US dollar 1.5872 1.5859
US dollar/yen 106.83 106.22
- NZPA
