NZ dollar holds in recent range in holiday trading after Chinese data

Friday 23rd November 2012

The New Zealand dollar traded within its recent range in quiet trading with US markets closed for the Thanksgiving Day holiday and after figures showed Chinese manufacturing is growing again.

The kiwi dollar slipped to 81.46 US cents from 81.55 cents at 5pm in Wellington yesterday. The trade-weighted index fell to 73.21 from 73.30.

China's HSBC managers' index indicated industrial production is growing this month, with a preliminary reading of 50.4. That marked the first expansion in 13 months and helped bolster hopes that the world's second-largest economy might be in better shape than feared. By contrast, a survey of purchasing managers in services and manufacturing industries in the euro zone was little changed at 45.8 in November and activity has now fallen in 14 of the past 15 months.

"There was little to drive market direction as market activity remained light during the US Thanksgiving holiday," said Kymberly Martin, market strategist at bank of New Zealand. "Generally sentiment was fairly stable, assisted by the benign China PMI reading."

While Wall Street was closed, equity markets in Europe gained, with the UK's FTSE 100 climbing 0.7 percent and Germany's DAX 30 was up 0.8 percent.

The kiwi dollar slipped to 63.30 euro cents from 63.50 cents and traded at 51.15 British pence from 51.09 pence. It was little changed at 78.47 Australian cents and slipped to 67.16 yen from 67.21 yen.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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