Figures released in the US in the early hours of today, NZ time, showed 6.65 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance last week following 3.3 million filing the previous week.
But the benchmark data on the US employment market, the non-farm payrolls, will be released later today.
"Relative to what we've seen over the last couple of weeks, it was very subdued" although there was plenty to react to, had the market been so inclined, said Mike Shirley, a dealer at Kiwibank.
For example, assistant Reserve Bank governor, Christian Hawksby, made a statement saying that ATM cash deposit and withdrawal facilities are functioning well and customers were adjusting to banks' reduced operating hours.
And Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced further measures to help cushion the impact of the crisis on businesses, including a safe harbour from insolvency law for directors and the ability to "hibernate" existing company debt if at least 50 per cent of creditors agree.
"Nothing they said was really new or ground-breaking as far as the market was concerned. It was just more reassuring talk," Shirley said.
As well, Moody's Investors Service maintained New Zealand's "Aaa" credit rating and said the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the country "will be mitigated by highly effective institutions and governance" and so the rating is resilient to such shocks.
One reason the US markets didn't react to the unemployment filing data was that US President Donald Trump had tweeted about the same time that he had brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia to call a ceasefire in their oil price war.
"Everyone knew it – the US unemployment filings data – was going to be bad. It was just the magnitude of badness" that had been unknown, Shirley said.
Thailand-based Stephen Innes, chief global markets strategist at AxiCorp, took a more jaundiced view of the US market action over night.
"US Equities take a stroll through Wonderland, hoping for 'herd immunity'," was how he titled his commentary.
"The optimistic read here is that the market is already toggled for horrendous economic numbers. In other words, a bleak picture is already in the price," Innes said.
"But the process of risk normalisation will continue to be chaotic, and we should expect it to stay on a downward, albeit choppy, trend for the stock markets. After all, the world is expected to extend lockdowns."
The New Zealand dollar was trading at 97.38 Australian cents from 97.37 cents at 5pm yesterday. It was at 47.74 British pence from 47.86, at 54.45 euro cents from 54.18, at 63.79 yen from 63.66 and at 4.1846 Chinese yuan from 4.2101.
The bid price on the two-year swap rate closed at 0.4800 per cent from 0.4975 yesterday, while 10-year swaps were at 0.9100 per cent from 0.9125 per cent.
