NZ dollar gains as upbeat Asian data spurs US dollar selling

NZ dollar gains as upbeat data across Asia spurs US dollar selling

By Paul McBeth

Dec. 1 (BusinessDesk) - The New Zealand dollar gained as a string of relatively upbeat economic data across Asia saw a continued sell-off in the US dollar, which had been triggered during Northern Hemisphere trading on weaker US housing and industrial data.

The kiwi rose to 66.18 US cents at 5pm in Wellington from 65.82 cents at 8am and 65.38 cents yesterday. The trade-weighted index advanced to 71.98 from 71.30 yesterday.

Traders started paring back their long positions on the greenback after US house sales and two regional manufacturing gauges missed expectations. That continued into the Asian session, with New Zealand terms of trade and property value figures largely matching market expectations, while Chinese indicators continued to show the world's second-biggest economy shifting to service-based growth from manufacturing.

"US data was a little bit weaker" and "the data we had on this side of the world has been pretty reasonable," said Sam Tuck, senior FX strategist at ANZ Bank New Zealand in Auckland. "The US dollar sell-off has been across the board, with the kiwi and Aussie rallying."

The local currency fell to 91.04 Australian cents from 91.33 cents immediately before the Reserve Bank of Australia's monetary policy review, which kept the target cash rate at 2 percent. It was little changed from 90.94 cents yesterday.

Traders will be watching US manufacturing data on Tuesday in the US, with non-farm payrolls the key event on Friday ahead of the US Federal Reserve's policy review on Dec. 16.

New Zealand's two-year swap rates increased one basis point to 2.72 percent and the 10-year swap advanced one basis point to 3.54 percent.

The kiwi rose to 4.2357 Chinese yuan from 4.1816 yuan yesterday after China's currency was added to the International Monetary Fund's group of reserve currencies.

The local currency climbed to 81.35 yen from 80.23 yen yesterday, and rose to 62.58 euro cents from 61.75 cents. It gained to 43.88 British pence from 43.50 pence yesterday.

(BusinessDesk)

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