Loonie holds steady to end the week
Daily Currency Update
The Canadian Dollar sat in a similar range to what markets saw yesterday. Should oil prices continue to improve, markets may see the Loonie make gains against its US counterpart. The only data in Canada today was the Capacity Utilization for the second quarter which showed that production capacity in Canada was at 79.2%, more than the 78.4% expected. Oil regained position and headed back towards $70 a barrel this morning. Moves earlier in the week from Saudi Arabia saw prices drop due to a lack of demand from Asian markets. The benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price sat near $69.70 a barrel so far today.Key Movers
The US Dollar Index (DXY) was down this morning by more than -0.30% as investors laid more bets on a rate cut from the Federal Reserve next week. Expectations of a 50 basis point (bps) cut have gone from 30% earlier in the week to now over 40%. This follows the expected rate cut from the European Central Bank (ECB) yesterday acknowledging that higher rates did their job getting inflation under control. On the data front, markets are looking towards the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence numbers today, expected to come in slightly up from 67.9 to 68.0.In Eurozone news, the euro continued to rise in overnight trading after the ECB cut its lending rate from 3.75% to 3.5% yesterday. This cut was in line with market expectations and helped to signal a similar rate cut from the Fed next week.
Expected Ranges
- EUR/CAD: 1.4980 - 1.5076 ▲
- GBP/CAD: 1.7738 - 1.7859 ▲
- AUD/CAD: 0.9072 - 0.9164 ▲
- USD/CAD: 1.3526 - 1.3635 ▼