The kiwi had little to give thanks for yesterday with very little happening on the New Zealand currency market.
At 5pm the kiwi rose slightly to US41.13c from Thursday night's US41.04 close, while the aussie was also up, at US51.79c from yesterday's US51.65c.
One local dealer said the kiwi traded within a very tight range of US40.99c and US41.12c during the day, and was likely to remain within spitting distance of that in trading overnight.
"Obviously the New York holiday (Thanksgiving) is having an effect on limited volumes going through. Basically we just followed aussie around - aussie managed to rally 10 points and kiwi moved up 10 points on the back of that. Overall it's been pretty quiet ... a dead day.
"Aussie seems to be trapped in a tight range at the moment, so I wouldn't see us break out of US40.95c/41.20c."
The local market was focusing on the forex implications of merger and acquisition activity - in particular Alcoa Inc's $A11 billion ($NZ14.0 billion) bid for Australia's WMC Ltd (formerly Western Mining) and the bid by the world's largest gold miner, AngloGold, to take over Normandy Mining.
Bank of New Zealand forex manager Greg Ball said although these bids would take time to resolve, if they proceeded they would support the aussie and vicariously the kiwi.
Overnight the US dollar rose to its highest level against the yen in three-and-a-half months after a newspaper report said the United States would not object if Japan weakened its currency by buying foreign bonds. Tokyo markets were also closed for a public holiday, putting the breaks on investment in the yen.
The greenback was also up against the euro, having already hit a three-month high after news the German economy shrank in the third quarter raised concern that the euro zone economy might be sliding into recession.
The US dollar was at US87.94c euro and 123.81 yen compared with its US87.77c and 123.16 yen close here Thursday.
The kiwi-aussie cross was trading at A79.41c (A79.46c at yesterday's close), while the aussie was buying $NZ1.2589 ($NZ1.2586).
On the other crosses at 5pm, the kiwi was trading at 0.4676 euros (0.4676 at yesterday's close), 50.91 yen (50.54), 29.11 pence (28.95), 0.9146 marks (0.9145), and 0.6827 Swiss francs (0.6795).
The trade-weighted index was at 49.31 (49.18), the 90-day bank bills were unchanged at 4.88 percent and the monetary conditions index tightened slightly to minus 946 (minus 958).
On the debt market, the March 2002 bonds were at 4.76 percent (4.77), the April 2004s at 5.49 percent (5.51), the November 2006s at 6.07 percent (6.09), and the November 2011s at 6.60 percent (6.61).
- NZPA
<i>Currency:</i> Kiwi follows Aussie during quiet day
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