Kiwi

Trading floor shorthand, from the flightless bird on the New Zealand one dollar coin. Like cable for sterling against the US dollar, aussie for the Australian dollar and loonie for the Canadian, the nickname belongs to spoken dealing rather than to any document. Said without qualification it means the New Zealand dollar quoted against the US dollar, the pair carrying the ISO codes NZD and USD. Any other pairing is named, as in kiwi against the yen.

The currency belongs to the group described as commodity currencies, because New Zealand's export earnings are concentrated in agricultural products, dairy above all, so the exchange rate has historically tracked prices for those exports alongside the usual drivers of any floating rate: the policy rate set by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the interest rate differential against other currencies, and general risk appetite. It floats freely, it is traded around the clock through the global forex market, and its home session opens before the rest of the world's, which is why the pair is often the first to react to weekend news.

Two things trip readers up. The first is scale: the New Zealand dollar is a minor rather than a major currency by turnover, and turnover thins noticeably outside the Asia Pacific hours, so quoted spreads widen at times of day when a larger pair's would not. The second is that a nickname is not a symbol. Nothing settles against the word kiwi, and it appears in commentary, chat and voice broking rather than on a trade confirmation, a contract specification or a statement, all of which use the ISO codes.