WILLINGTON: The kiwi dollar traded at 52.53 British pence as at 8am on today in Wellington, having traded as high as 52.72p in New York on Friday from 52.14p in Asia at the end of last week.
At a meeting in Brussels on Friday, European Union member states agreed Britain had provided enough guarantees about its exit from the EU to begin talks on its future relationship with the economic bloc although afterwards Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said the most difficult phase was to come.
Meanwhile, the greenback gained on optimism US tax reforms will be enacted, including slashing the corporate rate to 21 per cent from 35 per cent. “The GBP was one of the worst performing currencies on Friday, despite EU leaders officially agreeing to move to the next phase of Brexit talks,” said BNZ interest rate strategist Nick Smyth.
In New Zealand today, traders will be watching for the services PSI for November and the ANZ Consumer Confidence Index for December but the big economic event will be the release of third-quarter gross domestic product data on Thursday, which is expected to show growth slowed to 0.6 per cent in the quarter for an annual pace of 2.4 per cent.
