Currency: Quiet start to week for dollar

The New Zealand dollar traded in a narrow range today in a quiet start to the week.

The July 4 holiday in the United States at the weekend, the start of winter school holidays here and a quiet local business and economic news calendar all pointed to a lacklustre week.

"The main act, domestically, will be the quarter two NZIER (NZ Institute of Economic Research) business opinion survey on Tuesday, which could be NZ dollar supportive initially," Westpac Institutional Bank said in a commentary.

The NZ dollar was at US62.80c by 5pm from US62.98c at 5pm on Friday.

A Reserve Bank statement today that the pricing of floating rate mortgages appeared "unusually" high in recent months had little impact.

Imre Speizer, Westpac's senior market strategist, said the statement was directed at a debate about bank margins.

"As a result of that statement there is really no more likelihood of cutting rates. It does, at the margin, support the idea that rates will stay at their trough for the one year Dr Bollard indicated," he said.

He said yields rose in the local interest rate market in reaction to a sell off in the Australian swaps near that market's close on Friday.

The NZ dollar edged down against the Australian dollar to A78.99c at 5pm from A79.07c on Friday, and eased to 0.4495 euro from 0.4505 and to 59.95 yen from 60.45 yen.

The trade weighted index was 59.48 from 59.66 on Friday.

Currency rates:

NZ dlr/US dlr US62.80c US62.98c

NZ dlr/Aust dlr A78.99c A79.07c

NZ dlr/euro 0.4495 0.4505

NZ dlr/yen 59.95 60.45

NZ dlr/stg 38.55p 38.46p

NZ TWI 59.48 59.66

Aust dlr/US dlr 79.48c 79.62c

Euro/US dlr 1.3980 1.3989

US dlr/yen 95.46 95.97

- NZPA