By Ketki Saxena
Investing.com – The Canadian dollar weakened against its US counterpart today, with the greenback boosted by rising treasury yields and as risk sentiment remained tempered at the prospect of a hawkish Fed with a few more rate hikes up its sleeve.
Today’s US initial jobs claims - coming after last Friday’s blockbuster non-farm payrolls data, further raised bets for future aggressive Fed action to cool labour markets. While the jobless claims rose to their highest level in four weeks, unemployment still remains at a historic low, and more or less in line with economist expectations.
The loonie meanwhile was pressured by risk-aversion in markets, and a reversal in crude prices on Fed fears, increased US inventories, and as critical oil infrastructure in Turkey appeared to have escaped major damage as a result of the recent earthquake in the country.
On a technical level, analysts at FX Street note, “The USD/CAD remains neutral to upward biased, though the intersection of several support/resistance trendlines and the presence of the 50/100/20-day Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs) around 1.3402-1.3441 keep the USD/CAD trendless.”
“Upwards, the USD/CAD needs to clear the weekly high at 1.3475, which, once cleared, will exacerbate a leg-up toward 1.3500. on the flip side, the USD/CAD needs to break 1.3359, the weekly low, to challenge the psychological 1.3300 figure.”
Analysts at Scotiabank (TSX:BNS) note than on a fundamental level, “Spot’s turn lower suggests a minor peak may have formed, putting the USD on course for a push lower. But USD losses so far are not especially powerful and the underlying trend oscillators remain bullishly aligned for the USD, suggesting limited scope for declines at the moment.”
“Look for firm support on dips to the low/mid 1.33s.”
The next major piece of data USD/CAD investors will watch is the Canadian jobs report, due tomorrow at 8:30 AM . Expectations are for dramatic indications of a cooling jobs market, with a gain of 15K new jobs expected, compared to the significantly higher than expected 104K jobs added last month.