The pandemic halted economic activity around the world, sending financial markets into a tailspin. However, as the virus was contained by some nations and life returned to some semblance of normality, investors started looking beyond the recovery.
This has seen stock markets soar in recent weeks with the US Nasdaq hitting a record overnight.
Imre Speizer, a senior market strategist at Westpac New Zealand, said the optimism among equities investors has spilled over to all other risk-sensitive assets, such as commodities and the kiwi and Australian dollars.
"The thought process of the market is if equities say things are getting better, then you should back all risky assets, regardless of what they are: property, or commodities, or commodity currencies," he said.
"There might be a bit more juice in it and a prod above 66 US cents looks likely."
Local data today did little to move the currency, with the preliminary reading of the ANZ business outlook survey showing deep pessimism among firms' owners about the economic outlook, albeit less gloomy than previously.
Statistics NZ figures also showed a decline in March-quarter wholesale trading.
Australia's Treasury today revised down its forecast unemployment rate to 8 per cent, having previously seen it as high as 10 per cent in the June quarter. The kiwi traded at 93.55 Australian cents from 93.47 cents yesterday.
The local currency increased to 51.48 British pence from 51.25 pence yesterday, and advanced to 57.94 euro cents from 57.69 cents. It fell to 70.61 yen from 71.30 yen yesterday and traded at 4.6297 Chinese yuan from 4.6145 yuan.
The bid price on the two-year swap rate was 0.2325 per cent from 0.2200 per cent, while the 10-year swaps were at 0.8500 per cent from 0.8675 per cent yesterday.
