KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand dollar softened against the greenback as China's latest attempt to cool its economy had a flow-on effect for high-yielding currencies.
After hitting a month high of US78.10c on early Saturday, the kiwi lost ground on strong jobs data out of the US.
Today the high-yielding kiwi ebbed down from a high of US77.60c to close around US77.42c, compared with US77.82c at 5pm on Friday.
But Westpac analyst Michael Gordon said the day's downturn was more tied to Asian developments, specifically the weekend announcement that China was going to raise its banks' capital reserve requirements.
"Whereas you've got the US economy slowing reasonably quickly, China and the rest of developing Asia is still holding up quite well."
The kiwi also backed down against the Aussie dollar, closing at 88.38c, from A88.64c on Friday.
"I think there's an element of top picking there," Mr Gordon said.
"We tend to find that offshore investors seem to be far more open to the Australian growth story than New Zealand, so they're always looking for the kiwi to weaken versus aussie."
The New Zealand dollar was also buying 86.38 yen from 86.62 at the Friday close, and 0.5287 euro from 0.5312. The trade weighted index was 71.86 (72.21).
Overseas the US dollar held near one month highs against the yen as hopes of an aggressive US interest rate cut faded after stronger than expected US jobs data.
The jobs report had dashed hopes of a half percentage point rate cut at the December 11 Federal Reserve meeting, but also soothed fears that the world's biggest economy would fall into recession.
Reuters currency rates:
5.05pm today 5pm Friday
NZ dlr/US dlr US77.42c US77.82c
NZ dlr/Aust dlr A88.38c A88.64c
NZ dlr/euro 0.5287 0.5312
NZ dlr/yen 86.38 86.62
NZ dlr/stg 38.11p 38.41p
NZ TWI 71.86 72.21
Australian dollar US87.60c US87.80c
Euro/US dollar 1.4645 1.4633
US dollar/yen 111.56 111.33
- NZPA