Canadian Dollar Recovers Ahead of PPI, Retail Sales

PPI and retail sales figures will be released in the United States, Thursday. The Canadian dollar found some upside potential around the midweek inflection point, as investors await Thursday’s data.

The Canadian dollar continues to struggle with its US counterpart, but it is on track to be one of the best performers this week as the only major currency completely in the green.

Canada’s high-performance week occurs when there is no important Canadian data on the table. Canadian manufacturing sales for January, which will be reported on Thursday, are predicted to recover to 0.4% from the previous -0.7%. On Friday, Canadian housing starts are forecast to rise slightly to 230K from 223.6K. Neither print is expected to attract much notice, if any.


Friday will provide another set of University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment and Expectation prints for March. UoM Consumer Sentiment is projected to remain unchanged at 76.9, while UoM Consumer Inflation Expectations last showed US consumers expecting annual inflation to be approximately 2.9%.

Technically; the Canadian dollar started Wednesday with upbeat performance, finding gains against the majority of its major currency peers before slightly softening during the American trading session. At the time of writing, the CAD is down around a sixth of a percent against the Australian Dollar (AUD) and tipping into the red against the Euro (EUR) but still within a tenth of a percent of the day’s opening bids.

USD/CAD fell back into the week’s lows as the Canadian Dollar strengthened, establishing a new weekly low near 1.3460. The pair is still trading above last week’s low of 1.3420, the USD/CAD pair is trading, down -0.13%, at 1.3472 at the time of writing, and 200-hour (SMA) near 1.3520 serves as a technical ceiling in the near term.