By Ketki Saxena
Investing.com – The Canadian dollar strengthened against its U.S. counterpart on Friday, as risk sentiment rebounded in equities, and crude prices surged back from four-month lows.
On a fundamental level for the USD/CAD pair, analysts at Scotiabank (TSX:BNS) note, “Risk appetite remains the strongest pull on the CAD’s performance from a measured correlation point of view. “
The Canadian dollar is also being supported by narrowing yield differentials with the dollar, as this week’s US CPI data helped cement expectations that the Fed has reached its terminal rate.
Markets are now betting on rate cuts from the Fed in May.
While Scotiabank analysts note that spreads are “showing very weak correlations with the CAD currently", they "have shifted more constructively for the CAD over the past couple of weeks.”
“The CAD is very close to fair value (1.3721) currently, after a protracted period of below fair value trading.”
For the week, the Canadian dollar is up about half a percent point against the US dollar.
Next week, Canadian CPI data for October is expected to be a key driver for the loonie.
Analysts expect CPI to fall to 3.2% from 3.8% in September.
On a technical level for the pair, Scotiabank analysts note, “The week ahead range estimator suggests some slight downside risk for USDCAD to 1.3685, within a potential range of 1.3560/1.3812.”
“The ceiling on USDCAD is firming up significantly in the 1.38 region while the broader trend in the USD favours fading modest USDCAD gains. The lower end of that estimated range looks ambitious for the week ahead (trading will slow significantly into the Thanksgiving weekend) but there is a huge buildup of CAD short positioning that will be highly sensitive to even modest gains in the CAD”