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NZ Dollar mixed after being clobbered in London

Wednesday, 16 January 2013, 5:25 pm
Article: BusinessDesk

NZ Dollar mixed after being clobbered in London

Jan 16 (BusinessDesk) - Jan 16 (BusinessDesk) - The New Zealand dollar was little changed on Wednesday after being clobbered overnight in London trading.
The kiwi was at 84.06 US cents at 5pm, from 83.93 US cents at 8am and 83.94 cents at 5.25pm on Tuesday.

It fell from 84.19 cents to 83.75 cents overnight on Tuesday before recovering.

Imre Speizer, senior market strategist at Westpac, said the clobbering of the kiwi in London trading was the main feature of recent trading.

There appeared to have been a large kiwi-euro flow in London, Tim Kelleher, head of institutional FX sales at ASB Institutional said.

Traders ultimately decided that US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke did not say anything particularly new in a speech on Tuesday NZ time and there was little direction from trading on equity markets in Asia today.

The market is drifting ahead of employment data in Australia on Thursday and consumer price index data in New Zealand on Friday.

Little change is expected in the consumer price index in the December quarter but given indications of a strengthening economy in the NZIER QSBO business confidence survey, traders will want to see that confirmed. A 0.1 percent rise is expected by economists polled by Reuters.

The kiwi has been drifting lower against the yen after reaching 75.39 yen, its highest level since mid-2008 on January 14. Warnings by politicians in Japan about the yen getting too weak have supported it in the middle part of this week.

The kiwi was at 74.02 yen at 5pm from 75.20 on Tuesday.

It was firm against the Australian dollar early this afternoon but drifted back again to be at 79.63 Australian cents at 5pm from 79.70 on Tuesday.

The euro has been hurt by comments that it was too high from a euro zone finance minister and that allowed the kiwi to rise to 63.28 euro at 5pm from 62.83 on Tuesday.

It was at 52.34 British pence from 52.26 and the trade-weighted index was at 75.30 from 75.42.

(BusinessDesk)

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