KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand dollar is weak on jitters in international financial markets, even though the Reserve Bank today again praised the soundness of the country's financial system.
The NZ dollar was at US57.47c by 5pm after dipping from its US57.56c level at 8am then recovering.
Overnight the greenback and yen rallied on renewed market worries about the global economic downturn and that took the NZ dollar down from its US58.64 level at 5pm yesterday.
A sell-off in stock markets worldwide dampened investors' appetite for risk.
"With the depressing news on the global economy continuing to spill out, the US dollar and the Japanese yen rally," said Andrew Busch, global FX strategist at BMO Capital Markets in Chicago.
But Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard said New Zealand's banks, and the Australian parents of the large Australian-owned banks, had enough capital to withstand an increase in loan losses associated with an economic downturn.
The ANZ bank said buying interest in the kiwi yesterday provided only limited support. Any gains were easily wiped out.
The kiwi was unchanged against the aussie, trading at A87.30c, but slipped on the trade-weighted index to 58.61 from 59.33 at 5pm yesterday.
Against the yen it was 56.10 from 57.62 at 5pm yesterday.
- NZPA
