Economic data released from New Zealand on Friday was a bit mixed, though mostly good. The performance of the New Zealand currency was mixed as well, as the NZ dollar gained on its US counterpart but fell versus the Japanese yen.
New Zealand retail sales were up 2.3% in the June quarter from the previous three months, exceeding the forecast of 1.0% growth by a wide margin. Meanwhile, the BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index fell 1.8 points to 55.8 in July, though the reading still indicates healthy growth of the sector. With economic data being not that bad, the most likely reasons for the weaker performance of the kiwi were underwhelming reports from China and profit-taking after the currency’s rally.
NZD/USD went up from 0.7206 to 0.7238 as of 14:20 GMT today. At the same time, NZD/JPY went down from 73.45 to 73.14.
If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the New Zealand Dollar,
feel free to post them using the commentary form below.