Currency tsunami fails to drown kiwi

The so-called uridashi "tsunami" this month where almost $5 billion in New Zealand dollar denominated Japanese and European retail bonds mature, including $3.38 billion today alone, appears to be passing with no drama.

Some had tipped the huge amount of maturities, actually mostly eurokiwis, could result in a heavy sell-off of the New Zealand dollar as investors chose not to reinvest their money and instead repatriate the cash or invest elsewhere.

Royal Bank of Canada currency strategist Sue Trinh had expected big redemptions and a sell-off in the kiwi until New Zealand "dodged a bullet" in May when Standard & Poor's took the country's AA+ sovereign credit rating off creditwatch negative.

In fact for the past six weeks there had been renewed appetite for uridashis and eurokiwis from Japanese and European investors and net issuance - redemptions versus new issuance - turned positive in June for the first time in a year.

"It removes an otherwise very negative influence on the kiwi, and we struggle to see it selling off much below US60c from here," said Trinh.

Westpac market strategist Imre Speizer said that while today was nominally a big day for maturities, "some of the repositioning will have happened weeks in advance and some will happen weeks afterwards".

"I wouldn't get too hung up on the exact day."

Westpac expected about half of the maturing cash would be reinvested, "but we don't know how much exactly".

Speizer said some of the cash would have left already, "and that may well have been one of the factors in the kiwi sell-off over the last couple of weeks, particularly against the yen".

The kiwi closed at US63.36c at 5pm yesterday, little changed from its opening level but a cent higher on the same time on Monday.

Speizer said Westpac, which picks the kiwi to trade as low as US55c in the next three months, expected some strength in equity markets this week with some US financials including Goldman Sachs tipped to post consensus busting results.

That would strengthen appetite for risky assets like the kiwi.