The New Zealand Dollar Is Struggling

If you have been keeping up with the currency news and working out all the figures on your currency converter of late, you will know that the New Zealand dollar tends to experience real highs and lows over the course of time.  And sometimes those highs and lows are much more pronounced than those experienced by other currencies.

A news story which was published on a foreign exchange website recently shows this to be true.  The experiences of the New Zealand dollar were laid out in the story here.  And the word ‘volatile’ certainly does describe the events that have been happening lately.

Take its battle against the Euro, for example.  It started off by claiming an exchange rate of 0.4235 against the Euro on the 1st December.  And even though things dipped below that into the 0.41 range by the end of that week, they were soon back into the 0.42 range by the following Monday’s close of play.

But what happened next?  You will soon see that you can never quite be sure what to expect from this particular currency.  On the 12th the exchange rate dipped down to 0.4081 before rising again a few days later.  What could we expect from it next?

Well in truth it never regained the range of 0.42 figures again during December at all.  It ended the month on 0.4133, giving us something of a rollercoaster picture that proves this currency is having troubles of its own.

But how did it do elsewhere?  Was this just a random event or was the New Zealand dollar volatile overall?

It was indeed up and down elsewhere too, but if you had to pick a successful outcome you would need to look to the British pound to produce the result you wanted.  After all this beleaguered currency is worse off than the New Zealand dollar, so this is where we should look for a better result.

And indeed the month started with the New Zealand dollar claiming 0.3564 British pounds.  While there were minor downs, the ups were much better for the dollar, and the end of the month saw a rate of 0.3937 to finish off the year.

So is our title for this article really true, or does it depend on which currencies you look at when it comes to picking successes or failures?

You would think that when it came to the US dollar, that would trump the New Zealand dollar easily.  But it seems not, because while the New Zealand dollar did experience losses against this currency last month, there were on the whole good gains to be made.  From a starting point of 0.5340 we finished up at 0.5752!

The truth is though that there was a lot of negative news coming out of New Zealand during much of December.  Viewing the closing exchange rates for the whole of December tells only half the story – and it tells the story of a currency that has pulled back some ground on more than one occasion.

The currency had a much choppier time against the Australian dollar.  It began the month on 0.8322, and dipped down to 0.82 and then 0.81 before going back up again.  It reached 0.8492 on the 18th before dipping back once more, and the year ended with an exchange rate of 0.8380.

Perhaps this tells us that to see the whole story we must read between the lines and discover what has been happening each day as well as over the month as a whole.  And with the New Zealand dollar you never quite know what to expect.

We can certainly find out more by exploring the general news headlines as well as the exchange rates.  At present we have so much bad news surfacing about the economy that things can change literally by the hour.  This affects lots of countries of course, but the New Zealand dollar seems as if it has gone through a particularly volatile time compared to some others.

So what can we expect to come in the future?  Will January prove to be just as taxing for this currency?  It could well do, but one thing is for certain.  That is the fact that it will not be alone in its battle, whatever may happen next.