Canadian Dollar Down on Job Figures

After a lot of expectation regarding Canadian employment figures that were published today, the loonie fell drastically versus most of 16 main traded currencies and specially versus its U.S. counterpart, as negative job figures shunned investors away from assets in Canada.

The Canadian employment figures improved their numbers in the past two months before today’s report, that surprised traders and investors, and jobs were cut in Canada and the total unemployment rose from 8.4 to 8.6 percent in September, suggesting that Canada’s resilience from the recession is not as accurate as the market sentiment towards the North American nation suggested. The Canadian dollar has been posting negative weeks since the Bank of Canada affirmed the a strong rally for its currency would suffer interventions to protect exporters and assure Canada’s recovery from the downturn period which started last year.

The negative job figures combined with concerns regarding an eventual intervention coming from the central bank in Canada are strongly affecting the loonie’s performance in foreign-exchange markets as traders looking for high-yielding opportunities are giving up assets in Canada to bet in emergent markets and other commodity-linked currencies like the Australian dollar, leaving the loonie behind as its attractiveness declined substantially in the past few weeks.

USD/CAD traded at 1.0737 as of 13:37 GMT from a previous rate of 1.0624 yesterday. AUD/CAD traded at 0.9805 from 0.9677.

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