Currency: Dollar little changed, awaits GDP data

The New Zealand dollar market was unruffled by current account data today and is waiting for March quarter gross domestic product data tomorrow.

The local currency rose as high as US64.85c on Wednesday night but had fallen back on a combination of factors before this market opened.

The NZ dollar was at US64.16c at 5pm today from US64.03c at 8am and US64.07c at 5pm yesterday.

News that the annual current account deficit shrank to $15.25 billion, amounting to 8.5 per cent of gross domestic product, had little impact as it was in line with expectations.

The market had bigger fish to fry, said BNZ Capital senior strategist Danica Hampton.

This included the US dollar getting a boost from reports that the Swiss National Bank was selling Swiss francs for dollars and euros.

The US dollar also extended gains against the euro and the yen after the Fed's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) left US interest rates unchanged, as expected, but removed the warning that inflation could be undesirably low.

The FOMC statement had no surprises and the "buy USD" theme continued in its wake.

The focus locally is turning to the March quarter current account data at 10.45am tomorrow.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is predicting a 1 per cent contraction and the market consensus is for a 0.7 per cent contraction.

The NZ dollar rose to 0.4596 euro at 5pm from 0.4545 at the same time yesterday, and to 61.80 yen from 61.25.

Against the Australian dollar, it was A80.12c from A80.45c, while the trade weighted index lifted to 60.74 from 60.49.

Currency rates:

NZ dlr/US dlr US64.16c US64.07c

NZ dlr/Aust dlr A80.12c A80.45c

NZ dlr/euro 0.4596 0.4545

NZ dlr/yen 61.80 61.25

NZ dlr/stg 38.99p 38.90p

NZ TWI 60.74 60.49

Aust dlr/US dlr 80.09c 79.61c

Euro/US dlr 1.3959 1.4098

US dlr/yen 96.32 95.56

- NZPA