The New Zealand dollar rose against the greenback after global equity markets continued to claw back some of the ground they lost in the wake of the massive sell down triggered by the US credit rating downgrade.
The New Zealand dollar recently traded at 83.20 US cents, up from 82.09
cents in New York on Friday, and rose to 71.79 on the trade-weighted index of major trading partners' currencies from 71.12 last week.
On Wall Street, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 0.5 per cent to 1,178.81 as official data showed first-time applications for jobless benefits in the US fell 7,000 in the first week of August, and retail sales increased the most in fourth months.
Still, the gain was not enough to see US stocks reverse declines on a weekly basis, with the index falling for a third straight week. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index rose 3 per cent to 237.49.
"For now we're back to watching to equities, with movements in the kiwi and Australian dollar again correlated to the price activity in equity markets, so where equities are head, we head," said Khoon Goh, head of market economics and strategy at ANZ New Zealand. "We know such moves are tentative as we've seen so much volatility recently that we can't take anything for granted."
