By Ketki Saxena
Investing.com -- The Canadian dollar rallied against its US counterpart today, buoyed by an uptick in risk appetite reflected in equities, as crude prices rose, and as the dollar index posted its largest decline in over a month on weak US economic data.
The US JOLTS Job Openings and CB Consumer Confidence data came in below expectations, boosting market expectations that the US Federal Reserve may pause its interest rate hike cycle, and prompting a sharp drop in US treasury yields.
US JOLTs Job Openings declined from 9.165 million to 8.827 million, meanwhile, the US Consumer Board consumer confidence index dropped to 106.1 from 114.0.
On a technical level for the USD/CAD pair, analysts at Forex Live note, that the "100-hour moving average currently comes in at 1.35794. The price also moved within a swing area between 1.3564 and 1.3585."
"It would now take a move below the 100-hour moving average to increase the bearish bias... Buyers and sellers are battling it out between the technical levels and waiting for the next break."
Looking ahead for the pair, analysts at Credit Agricole (EPA:CAGR) note that their models indicate that buyers may show a preference for buying USD in month-end portfolio rebalancing.
Credit Agricole models also indicate that the strongest signal for a buy comes in the case of USD vs CAD.