Canada’s currency strengthened as stocks rose and oil topped $60 a barrel for the first time in six months. The loonie, as Canada’s dollar is known, extended gains as a government report showed the nation’s trade surplus widened more than economists anticipated. “It’s a decent result for the Canadian dollar,” said Steve Butler, director of foreign-exchange trading in Toronto at Scotia Capital Inc., a unit of Canada’s third-largest bank. “The currency still has a lot of catching up to do compared with the other commodity currencies.” The Canadian dollar strengthened 0.8 percent to C$1.1577 per U.S. dollar at 9:33 a.m. in Toronto, from C$1.1669 yesterday. The currency has appreciated for six straight weeks. One Canadian dollar buys 86.37 U.S. cents. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index advanced 0.7 percent. The Canadian dollar, which trades as a risk proxy, tends to rise and fall with stocks and commodity prices. Crude for June delivery rose as much as 2.7 percent to $60.08, the highest since Nov. 11, on the New York Mercantile Exchange on speculation an economic recovery will reduce a glut of fuel supplies. Raw materials including oil accounted for 56 percent of the nation’s export revenue last year. Trade Surplus Canada posted a trade surplus of C$1.1 billion ($950 million) in March as imports to the world’s eighth-largest economy fell faster than exports, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast the surplus would widen to C$500 million. “Canadian dollar weakness is fleeting and brief,” said John Curran, a Toronto-based senior vice president at CanadianForex Ltd., an online foreign-exchange dealing firm. “While there’s plenty of room for the Canadian dollar to weaken, I think it’s going to take a little while.” Curran advises traders of U.S. dollars to leave sell orders within the C$1.1820 to C$1.2050 range. The loonie will weaken to C$1.22 against the U.S. dollar by year-end, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 39 economists.

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