Canada’s dollar fell against its U.S. counterpart, ending a three-day advance, as U.S. stocks slipped and crude oil traded below $50 a barrel. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 0.2 percent, after climbing 0.7 percent, as financial and real-estate shares declined. Canada’s primary stock gauge, the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index, fell 0.4 percent. “The Canadian dollar has had a good run for the past couple of weeks,” said Aaron Fennell, a Toronto-based futures and currency broker at MF Global Canada Co. “I expect that it will run out of steam soon and have a difficult time breaking through 84 U.S. cents.” One Canadian dollar bought 82.77 U.S. cents at 11:19 a.m. in Toronto. Known as the loonie, the currency fell 0.4 percent to C$1.2082 per U.S. dollar, from C$1.2033 yesterday. The loonie will weaken to C$1.26 against the U.S. dollar this quarter before rebounding to C$1.16 by the end of 2010, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 38 analysts and economists. “The Canadian dollar is a proxy for risk,” said Jack Spitz, managing director of foreign exchange at National Bank of Canada in Toronto. “The risk environment is anything but clear. There’s a very strong correlation between the S&P 500 and the Canadian dollar.” The Bank of Canada last month cut its benchmark lending rate to a record 0.5 percent. Governor Mark Carney is due to announce guidelines on April 23 about quantitative easing, a policy in which a central bank buys government debt to try to revive economic growth. Crude oil for May delivery rose 0.3 percent to $49.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, compared with $52.24 a week ago.

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