The Canadian dollar fell against basically all of its most-traded counterparts following the release of mixed macroeconomic data earlier today. Additionally, some market analysts explained the currency’s weakness by traders being cautious ahead of tomorrow’s jobs data.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported that the number of housing starts was at 216,210 in January, almost unchanged from the figure of 216,275 registered in December. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada revealed that the New Housing Price Index was unchanged in December, whereas experts were anticipating the same 0.1% increase as in November.
Specialists predicted that the employment report, which is due to release at 13:30 GMT on Friday, will show an increase by 10,300 jobs in January following the substantial gain by 78,600 in December. The unemployment rate is expected to increase from 5.7% to 5.8%.
Besides economic data, the slump of crude oil prices by almost 1%, which followed yesterday’s decline, was also likely responsible for the loonie’s poor performance.
USD/CAD rose from 1.2565 to 1.2588 as of 19:50 GMT today. EUR/CAD gained from 1.5408 to 1.5437, bouncing from the daily low of 1.5375. CAD/JPY declined from 86.96 to 86.49.
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