Kiwi dollar heads down

The New Zealand dollar is headed for a 0.8 per cent weekly fall against the greenback and remains under pressure ahead of the US jobs data due later in the global trading day.

The kiwi traded at 70.23 US cents. It traded at 70.83 cents last Friday.

The trade-weighted index was at 73.21 from 73.27, below the Reserve Bank’s assumed level of 75 in the last set of forecasts it published.

The kiwi has been weighed down by recent US dollar strength but pared some of those losses after it touched fresh fourmonth lows overnight.

However, while it opened higher, it waned over the day after it failed to break through resistance ahead of the US nonfarm payrolls data, due overnight.

The data is expected to show US unemployment fell to 4 per cent from 4.1 per cent while the world’s biggest economy added

188,000 workers in April.

Across the Tasman, the Reserve Bank’s statement on monetary policy tweaked inflation a bit but “ultimately the message from them was no different,” so the kiwi was little changed against the Australian dollar. It traded at 93.01 Australian cents vs 93.25 cents yesterday.

The next event for the kiwi will be next week’s monetary policy review and statement, the first under its new governor and “if it wasn’t for Adrian Orr, I think it would be quite a boring statement,” said NZ Bank senior macro-strategist Phil Borkin.

The kiwi fell to 4.4569 yuan from 4.4653 yuan and to 51.17 British pence from 51.60 pence.

It was at 76.61 yen from 76.93 yen and

58.59 euro cents from 58.50 cents.

New Zealand’s two-year swap rate was unchanged at 2.27 per cent and

10-year swaps fell 2 basis points to 3.20 per cent.