5.45pm
The New Zealand dollar closed largely unchanged today after spending most of the local session locking in gains it made offshore on Friday, a local dealer said.
At 5pm in Wellington, the kiwi was buying US69.48c from US69.52c at 8.30am this morning and US69.09c at 5pm on Friday, having traded between US69.40c and US69.65c today.
ANZ Investment Bank chief foreign exchange dealer Murray Hindley said the kiwi had spent most of today consolidating the gains it made on Friday.
The kiwi rose against the greenback on Friday night as the US currency was sold off against most of the other major currencies despite better than expected US employment data.
Mr Hindley said the kiwi had continued to rise early today " we saw a push towards the high of US69.65c, but it's since given up its gains".
The kiwi retreated from its highs for the day on the back of its aussie counterpart. The aussie subsided slightly after comments by Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in its quarterly statement on monetary policy that inflation while remaining relatively low, was likely to rise next year.
At 5pm in Wellington, the Australian dollar was buying US76.16c (from US$75.70c at 5pm Friday).
Mr Hindley said the market was now looking to comments from US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan later this week about the US rate outlook.
Meanwhile, at 5pm in Wellington the euro was buying US$1.2972 (US$1.2886 at 5pm Friday) and the greenback was buying 105.39 yen (105.94 yen).
On the crosses the kiwi was buying A91.23c (A91.27c), 0.5356 euro (0.5361), 37.46 British pence (37.45), 73.23 yen (73.20) and 0.8189 Swiss francs (0.8228).
The NZ dollar trade-weighted index was at 68.09 (67.97) and the monetary conditions index was at plus 855 (847).
On the money market, 90-day bank bill yields were unchanged at 6.75 per cent.
February 2006 bond yields were at 6.25 per cent (6.21), July 2009s were at 6.06 per cent (6.02) and April 2013s were at 6.11 per cent (6.05).
- NZPA
<i>Currency:</i> Kiwi closes little changed, locks in Friday's gains
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