Currency: NZ dollar starts week stronger

The New Zealand dollar reached its highest level in nearly three weeks against the greenback and touched a seven-month high against the euro.

The rise followed a spate of upbeat data in the United States boosted expectations the global economy is reaching a bottom.

The number of people staying on jobless benefits in the US fell for the first time since January, while manufacturing in the US Mid-Atlantic region shrank much less than expected in June.

That made investors comfortable buying higher-yielding currencies such as the Australian and NZ dollars as they pared back holdings of the safe-haven US dollar.

By 8am today the NZ dollar was buying US64.34c, having peaked early Saturday around US64.80c, from US63.85c at 5pm on Friday.

In its morning briefing, ANZ bank said the NZ dollar had started the European session flat, but then found strong buying interest in the North American session with few sellers.

The kiwi peaked near 0.4630 euro, slipping to 0.4611 by today's local open, from 0.4590 on Friday evening, and it rose to 61.92 yen from 61.70.

Against the Australian dollar, the kiwi was at A79.78c at 8am from A79.65c at Friday's local close, while the trade weighted index rose to 60.80 at 8am today from 60.53 at 5pm on Friday.

Moves in the foreign-exchange market were limited, with investors awaiting a Federal Reserve policy meeting and economic data this week for more clues about the health of the global economy.

- NZPA