The New Zealand dollar traded either flat or a little lower against its major rivals after opening sharply lower today. The unexpectedly poor report about the trade balance in China hurt the market sentiment a bit. But the negative impact on the New Zealand dollar was limited as the data was not entirely bad. On top of that, domestic macroeconomic data was supportive of the kiwi.
China’s trade surplus narrowed to $38.73 billion in November from $42.81 billion in October instead of widening to $46.3 billion as analysts had predicted. The shrinking trade balance was a result of a decline in exports by 1.1%, year-on-year, that followed a 0.9% drop in the previous month. That was a nasty surprise as economists had predicted an increase of 1%. Yet not the whole report was bad as imports demonstrated a surprising growth of 0.3% that followed the big slump of 6.5% in October. Experts were expecting a decline of 1.8%. Rising Chinese imports bode well for the economy of New Zealand because it heavily relies on exports to China.
As for domestic data, Statistics New Zealand reported that the value of total manufacturing sales rose by 0.9% in the September quarter from the previous three months, seasonally adjusted. The drop in the prior quarter got a positive revision from 0.7% to 0.5%. The volume of total manufacturing sales fell by 0.3% in the September quarter.
NZD/USD was flat at 0.6555 as of 11:32 GMT today. EUR/NZD gained from 1.6858 to 1.6889. NZD/JPY fell from 71.21 to 71.09.
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