Canadian Dollar Rallies Against US Dollar Despite Weak Housing Data

The Canadian dollar today rallied against its US counterpart despite the release of weak Canadian building permits data by Statistics Canada driving the USD/CAD currency pair to 6-week lows. The release of positive US Producer Price Index data could not reverse the currency pair’s downtrend due to positive investor sentiment towards the loonie.
The USD/CAD currency pair today lost over 75 points to decline from an opening high of 1.2705 to a low of 1.2625 at the time of writing.
The currency pair was on a downtrend from the start of today’s session as the commodity-linked loonie was boosted by bullish crude oil prices as tracked by the West Texas Intermediate. The release of the positive Canadian housing starts data in the early American session also contributed to the pair’s decline. The March housing starts came in at 225,200 units as compared to the consensus estimate of 216,800 units. However, the building permits for February posted a much larger decline than was expected by registering a 2.6% drop as compared to the expected 1.3% decline.
The release of the positive US PPI data for March by the Bureau of Labor Statistics could not boost the currency pair. The final PPI print came in at a monthly 0.3% and an annualized 3.0% with both prints beating expectations. A rally in US Treasury bond yields also could not uplift the currency pair.
The currency pair’s future performance is likely to be affected by tomorrow’s US consumer inflation data and the global crude oil prices.
The USD/CAD currency pair was trading at 1.2617 as at 14:44 GMT having declined from a high of 1.2705. The CAD/JPY currency pair was trading at 84.93 having rallied from a low of 83.92.

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