New Zealand markets rallied on Friday following reports an agreement to prevent America from defaulting on its debt appears in sight.
ASB Bank foreign exchange sales head Tim Kelleher said the news out of the United States caused considerable volatility in the currency.
"We had quite a whippy morning in the fact that the initial offer by Boehner to Obama was refuted and so we saw the Dow futures drop quite sharply in our morning," Mr Kelleher said.
"That has rebounded now that it looks like the Dow is going to open up positively in New York tomorrow, and so the currencies have rallied back up on the back of that news."
Just after 5pm, the New Zealand dollar was buying: 83.06 US cents, 87.66 Australian cents, 51.96 pence, 0.6133 euro and at 81.76 yen.
Sharemarket joins relief rally
The New Zealand sharemarket was up, with the NZX Top 50 Index rising 23 points to 4741.
Tyndall Investment Management head of equities Rickey Ward said New Zealand's share market joined the relief rally enjoyed by bourses globally.
"It's really just a broad-based rally on the back of more positive news out of the US, basically, so nothing more complicated than that at this stage," Mr Ward said.
Sales volumes were light but the consumer discretionary sector seemed to have met a reasonable level of support, with Sky TV, Kathmandu and Michael Hill all having a better day today, he said.
Sky TV shares gained 12 cents to $6.10, Kathmandu shares rose 11 cents to $3.63 and Michael Hill shares ended steady at $1.43 after earlier being up 3 cents.
However, diligent was "a company that just can't buy a friend at the moment" and fell 78 cents to $4.87. Early today, the software company said new client agreements fell for a fifth successive quarter.
"I guess everyone's just waiting for the set of accounts to be finalised and released to the market, and until such time as that occurs, emotion will continue to drive the direction of this company's share price," Mr Ward said.
Tyndall manages about $500 million of stocks.