NZ dollar marks time awaiting northern hemisphere markets

US companies are about to start reporting their March quarter results

The New Zealand dollar was temporarily becalmed as traders waited to see how northern hemisphere markets open after the weekend.

The kiwi was trading at 58.73 US cents at 5pm in Wellington, in line with its close in New York on Friday at 58.69 and down from 59.07 at 5pm locally on Friday. The trade-weighted index was at 67.77 from 67.95.

"Currency markets are taking a bit of a breather," said Pat Gilligan, a director at Forex, but added that he doesn't expect this will last.

"We suspect we're not far away from another down leg in equities markets."

US companies are about to start reporting their March quarter results and how they see the outlook for the June quarter and "I wouldn't imagine they're going to be pretty reading," he said.

"We probably should expect more downside in US stocks, which should eventually weigh on the kiwi and Aussie dollars."

Longer-term, the US response to combatting covid-19 – "you would politely call it a confused approach" – is likely to prolong the economic impact on the world. A number of states are still not in lockdown.

"There's no way there's not going to be a massive plunge in demand in the US for the world's products," Gilligan said.

The virus continued its grim progress in the US with its cases of infection now numbering 336,830, outstripping the totals in Spain and Italy combined, the two countries suffering the worst impact in Europe.

New Zealand cases rose by 67 to 1,106, or 229 cases per million people compared with 1,108 per million in the US.

New Zealand still has just a single death from the virus while the US has 9,618 and White House officials estimate there will be between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths.

The New Zealand dollar was trading at 97.57 Australian cents from 97.38 cents at 5pm on Friday. It was at 48.04 British pence from 47.74, at 54.30 euro cents from 54.45, at 63.98 yen from 63.79 and at 4.1644 Chinese yuan from 4.1846.

The bid price on the two-year swap rate closed at 0.4650 percent from 0.4800 on Friday, while 10-year swaps were at 0.9150 percent from 0.9100 percent.