The USD/CAD pair gives up some of its intraday gains after posting a fresh two-month high to near 1.3780 in Friday’s New York session. The Loonie asset surrenders some gains after the release of the United States (US) Producer Price Index (PPI) and the Canadian Employment data for September.
The initial reaction after the data release was very bearish. However, it retraced half of its fall in the aftermath of the data.
The Canadian Employment report showed that the economy added 46.7K new jobs in September, higher than estimates of 27K and from 22.1K in August. In the same period, the Unemployment Rate surprisingly decelerated to 6.5% from the former reading of 6.6%. Economists expected the jobless rate to have accelerated to 6.7%.
Blowout job numbers could diminish market expectations for the Bank of Canada (BoC) to reduce interest rates again in October. The BoC has already cut its key borrowing rates by 75 basis points (bps) to 4.25%.
Meanwhile, Average Hourly Wages decelerated at a faster pace to 4.5% from 4.9% in August. This would keep risks of price pressures remaining persistent under control.
In the United States (US), the headline PPI remained flat on month-on-month. While the core producer inflation grew expectedly by 0.2%. However, the annual headline and core PPI rose at a faster-than-expected pace.
The US PPI data will unlikely impact market expectations for the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) likely interest rate action in November. According to the CME FedWatch tool, traders are confident that there will be an interest rate cut of 25 bps, which will push borrowing rates lower to 4.50%-4.75%.
