28 Jul 2014

Dollar weaker on Monday

7:39 pm on 28 July 2014

The New Zealand dollar was weaker against the currencies of all the nation's major trading partners at 5.40pm on Monday.

The senior client advisor at Bancorp Treasury Services, Peter Cavanaugh, says Monday's weakness was a spillover from last week's negativity following the Reserve Bank's OCR announcement last Thursday.

"There is also some trepidation in the markets that in the near future Fonterra will announce a downward revision to its 2015 payout, which is a bit of a cloud over the New Zealand dollar following lower dairy prices internationally."

Mr Cavanaugh said offshore news would also have an effect on the dollar.

"There's a lot of United States data out this week - GDP, Federal Reserve meeting and jobs data at the end of the week."

He said people were worried in case the news was positive for the US, which would put further downward pressure on the New Zealand / US exchange rate.

At 5.40pm, the Kiwi was trading at 85.34, 90.86, 50.27, 0.6355, 86.88 yen and 5.28 renminbi.

Little change in sharemarket

The sharemarket ended little changed. The benchmark Top 50 Index fell 7 points to 5187.

An investment advisor with Forsyth Barr, Damian Kearns, said trading was flat on Monday as the market took a cautious approach ahead of expected United States economic data.

"Dorchester Pacific is to bid $3 per share for Turners Auctions and that's won the support of the chairman. We've also seen major Acurity shareholders launch an all cash offer takeover for the remaining 29 percent of Acurity Healthcare group they don't own.

"Also SLI Systems has reported that they've slightly missed their prospectus forecast and it will report a smaller loss because of delays in the building sales team."

Mr Kearns said the NZX has provided its first half activity showing boosted sales over all but a fall in the average dollar amount per trade.

Shares in Turners Auctions rose 30 cents to $3.05c, while Dorchester's rose 1.5 cents to 23.5c.

SLI Systems shares rose 9 cents to $1.39.

Acurity Health shares rose $1.33 to $6.58.

In other news, the NZX released a report showing that all aspects of its business grew in the first half of the year, and it had also been busy on the regulatory front.