The kiwi's decline steepened yesterday after tech company Apple warned that both its production and sales are being disrupted by the virus and that it won't meet this quarter's revenue forecast.
"It highlights an interesting phenomenon with markets at times," XE Money said in a written commentary.
"Everyone KNOWS that having China off work for a month isn't going to be good for supply, and everyone KNOWS that having one billion people unable to travel and shop is not going to be good for demand, yet it sometimes needs someone to spell it out to move markets," XE said.
Reports from Apple and from shipping companies "saying they may be forced to effectively offload or dump chilled containers at the wrong ports can be enough to crystalise consensus into the fact that coronavirus is a big problem, and it is not going to go away in a few weeks," it said.
Imre Speizer, currency strategist at Westpac, said the domestic currency was managing to hold above key resistance at 63.80 US cents for the moment but "who knows what the evening headlines will be."
How the virus's impacts develop will be key to the kiwi's fortunes.
"It either becomes more serious, in which case the kiwi will fall, or it stabilises, in which case the kiwi should rebound," Speizer said.
"Our view for the kiwi, absent the pandemic effects, is positive right now. The New Zealand economy is out-performing a number of other economies, including the US economy, and is expected to do so for the rest of the year," he said.
The New Zealand dollar was at 95.43 Australian cents from 95.83 cents at 5pm yesterday. It was at 49.18 British pence from 49.31, unchanged at 59.19 euro cents, at 70.35 yen from 70.34 and at 4.4777 Chinese yuan from 4.4480.
The two-year swap rate rose to a bid price of 1.0902 per cent from 1.0830 yesterday while 10-year swaps fell to 1.4425 per cent from 1.4480.
