Potential signal:
- The USD/CAD is a buy at this point, with a stop-loss at the 1.41 level and a target of 1.44 above.
- The Canadian employment numbers were a bit of a disaster on Friday, as market expectations were missed by almost 75k.
USD/CAD
The U.S. dollar has risen against the Canadian dollar during the trading session on Friday, breaking above the 1.4250 level yet again.
The big driver here is Canadian employment, or maybe I should say lack of employment in Canada. While the unemployment rate came out at 6.5% as anticipated, Canada was supposed to, according to estimates, add 6,100 jobs last month. Instead, they lost 68,300 jobs. It’s a huge miss, and a 75,000-or-so swing in expectations really has caught the market on the wrong side of the trade for the most part.
Top Regulated Brokers
The upward trend in the US dollar almost certainly will be what's expected now that the interest rate differential is starting to widen.
U.S. yields have gained a little bit during the day, although very little, at 5.263% in the 10-year yield as I record this, and Canadian yields have dropped as traders are now expecting any type of rate hike to be pushed back.
This was a bit of a shock, and this is especially telling when there’s such a problem in the oil market. With that being said, the market is likely to see a lot of noise. The one thing that may save the Canadian dollar a bit, though, is the fact that we continue to see attacks in Iran, and the Canadian dollar sometimes is used as a proxy for petroleum.
Not against the U.S. dollar, because the U.S. produces over 14 million barrels a day, 20 million a day if you count the distillates. So, it is not as effective here, but it could pad some of the losses, all things being equal.
This is a market that looks like it’s trying to work off some of this excess froth, perhaps building enough momentum to go challenge the 1.45 level at this rate.
Ready to trade our Forex USD/CAD predictions? Here are the best Canadian online brokers to start trading with.