CAD Slightly Up In Low Data Monday

The Canadian dollar was little changed Monday morning amid a dearth of market-moving data and generally lower commodity prices.

The loonie was up 0.02 of a cent to 90.82 cents US.

It’s a light week for economic data.

The primary economic news for the week comes out Wednesday when Statistics Canada is expected to report that retail sales in February rose 0.4 per cent from January, when sales posted a big 1.3 per cent bounce from the poor performance registered in December because of severe ice storms.

Economists expect a good chunk of the gain will be driven by higher gasoline prices.

The big number for the U.S. is March durable goods data coming out on Thursday. Economists looked for goods orders to have risen by 1.9 per cent following a 2.2 per cent gains in February. Excluding the volatile transportation segment, orders are expected to have risen by 0.5 per cent.

On the commodity markets, May crude in New York slipped 35 cents to US$103.95 a barrel.

May copper was unchanged at US$3.04 a pound while June bullion fell $9.40 to US$1,284.50 an ounce.

The loonie finished declined 0.28 of a cent last week as the Bank of Canada said that it was leaving its key rate at one per cent, where it’s been since September 2010 . The bank also lowered its forecast for first-quarter growth this year to 1.5 per cent from 2.5 per cent, but attributed the downgrade mostly to temporary impacts of a unusually severe winter.

via Kitco

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza