BS: Canadian Dollar Touches Three-Week Low on Outlook for Economy
Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Canada’s dollar touched a three-week low as commodities and U.S. stock-index futures fell on signs of a slowing global economic recovery, reducing the appeal of currencies tied to growth.
“Evidence that global growth is softening is negative for Canadian economic fundamentals and by default the Canadian dollar,” Camilla Sutton and Sacha Tihanyi, strategists at Bank of Nova Scotia in Toronto, wrote in a research note to clients. “Canadian data is also beginning to weaken, providing early evidence that the softening in the U.S. is flowing into Canada.”
The Canadian currency, nicknamed the loonie, traded at C$1.0465 per U.S. dollar at 8:27 a.m. in New York, compared with C$1.0464 yesterday, after sliding to C$1.0494, the weakest level since July 22. One Canadian dollar buys 95.56 U.S. cents.
Crude oil, the nation’s largest export, dropped 1.4 percent to $76.91 a barrel in New York, and futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index retreated 0.6 percent. The loonie tends to rise and fall with commodities and stocks as a proxy for risk appetite.
The loonie weakened over the past two days versus the dollar after the U.S. Federal Reserve said in its policy statement that “the pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated.”
Canada’s trade deficit unexpectedly widened to C$1.13 billion ($1.09 billion) in June, Statistics Canada reported yesterday.
--Editors: Greg Storey, Dennis Fitzgerald
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