Kiwi dollar recovers from US1c slapping

The New Zealand dollar spent the tail end of last week recovering from the "slapping" at the hands of the United States Federal Reserve.

At 8am today it was up half a cent to US70.12c from US69.61c at 5pm on Friday.

Friday had seen it fall more than a cent after the Federal Reserve decided to lift its discount rate, a rate at which it lends emergency funds, by 25 basis points to 0.75 per cent.

ANZ senior economist Koon Goh said the NZ dollar was "initially slapped through support" during the local session after the discount rate lift and spent the remainder of the trading week recovering.

Meanwhile, against the Australian the kiwi continued to lose ground, worth A77.79c this morning, down from A78.10c on Friday.

It was also down against the European single currency, to 0.5141 euro, from 0.5161 euro.

It rose to 64.11 Japanese yen from 63.82 yen and was also up slightly against the British pound, to 45.28p from 45.11p.

The trade weighted index rose to 64.97 from 64.93.

On Friday, the US dollar climbed across the board, touching an eight-month high against a currency basket, the day after the Federal Reserve raised its loans rates.

In late afternoon trading in New York, the dollar was up 0.2 per cent in a calculated measure against a basket of currencies at 80.544 after rallying to an eight-month high of 81.342, according to Reuters data.

Against the dollar, the euro was last little changed at $1.3607, narrowly putting the single currency up for the week against the dollar and snapping five straight weeks of declines. The euro traded as low as $1.3444 according to Reuters data, its lowest in nine months, earlier in the session.

Against the yen the dollar rose 0.4 per cent to 91.57 yen.

- NZPA