Last week, after several inter-meeting interest rate cuts by the Reserve Bank of Australia, the RBA left rates unchanged at 0.25% at its regularly scheduled meeting and said it will do nothing until employment increases and until it is confident inflation will rise to 2-3%. So basically, it’s in wait-and-see mode.
Today, the Bank of Canada has its regularly scheduled Interest Rate Decision and Monetary Policy Report. After its last scheduled meeting March 3, in which the committee cut interest rates by 50 bps to 1.25%, the BoC proceeded to have inter-meeting rate cuts on March 13 and March 27, slashing interest rates to 0.25% in order to stem the economic fallout from the coronavirus. In addition, the committee began its own version of Quantitative Easing and a Commercial Paper Program to help short-term funding. It said it will take more action if needed.
Last week, Canada released its Employment Change for the month of March. Given the extremely poor Initial Claims data in the U.S. the two prior weeks before that (3.3 million and 6.6 million, respectively), expectations were not high for Canada’s data. Expectations were for -365,000. The actual number was -1,010,700 versus a February figure of +30,300. Is this worth “further action if needed?" Could the BoC buy more bonds (more QE)? If so, how much? Although the BoC won’t budge on interest rates, it may use some other sort of unconventional means from its toolkit to provide further stimulus.
The decision will also be watched closely as the Monetary Policy Report is due out, which will provide outlooks and guidance for economic conditions.
Looking at a chart of USD/CAD, markets don’t seem to expect much out of the BoC today. The pair traded up to 1.4667 on March 19 and have been trading lower since. On Monday, it reached its lowest levels since March 16. If markets expected something more from the BoC, the Canadian dollar would have been weakening heading into today’s meeting. Traders can’t argue that the reason USD/CAD is lower is because of Crude Oil. Traditionally, the Canadian dollar and crude oil move together. In other words, USD/CAD and WTI Crude Oil move in opposite directions. However, based on the correlation coefficient at the bottom chart, since the beginning of April, the Canadian Dollar and Crude have been moving in opposite directions, and there is barely any correlation between the two assets classes at the moment! (And crude was down more than another 7% yesterday.)
If the Bank of Canada does more QE, USD/CAD may run higher through resistance at 1.3920 and 1.4000. The next resistance is the downward sloping trendline and horizontal resistance near 1.4080. In the event USD/CAD does continue lower, support is near 1.3800/1.3810.