Investing.com - The New Zealand dollar dropped against its U.S. counterpart on Thursday, as strong U.S. service sector data released on Wednesday continued to lend broad support to the greenback.
NZD/USD hit 0.7534 during late Asian trade, the pair's lowest since Tuesday; the pair subsequently consolidated at 0.7533, declining 0.75%.
The pair was likely to find support at 0.7497, the low of March 2 and resistance at 0.7615, Wednesday's high.
The greenback remained supported after data on Wednesday showed that U.S. service sector activity grew at a faster rate than expected in February, boosting expectations for higher interest rates.
Another report showed that the U.S. private sector added 212,000 jobs in February, falling short of expectations for an increase of 220,000.
The kiwi was lower against the Australian dollar, with AUD/NZD advancing 0.65% to 1.0366.
Also Thursday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said that retail sales rose 0.4% in January, in line with expectations, after a 0.2% uptick the previous month.
A separate report showed that Australia's trade deficit widened to A$0.98 billion in January from A$0.50 billion in December, whose figure was revised from a previously estimated deficit of A$0.44 billion.
Analysts had expected the trade deficit to widen to A$0.95 billion in January.
Later in the day, the U.S. was to release the weekly report on initial jobless claims and data on factory orders.