After testing 0.7300 on Monday, the NZD/USD pair lost its traction and closed in the negative territory. On Tuesday, the pair seems to be having a difficult time making a decisive move in either direction and was last seen posting small daily losses at 0.7270. During the Asian trading hours, the data from New Zealand showed that Electronic Card Retail Sales rose by 4% in April following March's increase of 0.8%. This reading, however, failed to provide a boost to the NZD. Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in China declined by 0.3% in April.
Meanwhile, the risk-averse market environment is not allowing the NZD to find demand. Reflecting the dismal mood, the S&P 500 Futures and the Nasdaq Futures are down 1.2% and 1.95%, respectively. On the other hand, the USD struggles to capitalize on risk-off flows with the US Dollar Index losing 0.23% at 90.07 and limiting NZD/USD's losses for the time being. Nevertheless, the greenback could start gathering strength if Wall Street's main indexes suffer heavy losses. Additionally, the 10-year US T-bond yield is up 0.6%, looking to provide support to the USD in the second half of the day.