Trading in the New Zealand dollar was extremely quiet today in the wake of volatile sessions fuelled by yesterday's foot and mouth, and vCJD scares.
The kiwi finished today's local session at US58.02c after trading in a very tight US57.90c to US58.05c range. Last night it closed at US57.49c.
"It has been comatose today," a Deutsche Bank dealer told NZPA.
"After a range over the previous 24 hours of roughly 1.3 big figures (US1.3c) it's been very quiet," he said.
Last night's offshore session saw very whippy trading in the kiwi on news that a Waikato farm worker was possibly afflicted by variant creutzfeldt-jakob disease (vCJD).
It had earlier fallen on rumours of a foot and mouth outbreak here.
The dealer expected the kiwi to continue trade quietly tonight "ahead of quite a lot of news next week starting with Tuesday's FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) meeting in the US".
He said the kiwi market was still "a little bit skittish" because of the small possibility that the vCJD scare turns into something serious.
"I think that will tend to keep buyers sidelined, at least in the short term."
By 5pm the aussie was at US65.10c (US64.55c last night), and the euro was at US$1.1358 (US$1.1339), while the US dollar was at 119.12 yen (120.18).
On the crosses the kiwi was buying A89.13c (A89.10c), 69.10 yen (69.10), 35.91 pence (35.77), 0.7846 Swiss francs (0.7784), and 0.5107 euros (0.5070).
The Australian dollar was at $1.1219 ($1.1220).
The monetary conditions index was at plus 236 (209), the trade-weighted index was at 62.16 (61.85) and 90-day bank bill yields were at 5.12 per cent (5.10).
The February 2005 yields were at 5.14 per cent (5.10), the November 2006s were at 5.34 per cent (5.30), and the November 2011s were at 5.75 per cent (5.73)
- NZPA
<i>Currency:</i> NZ dollar 'comatose' after CJD scare
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