The Canadian dollar showed mixed trading in early deals on Thursday. While the loonie edged lower against the dollar and the euro, it drifted higher against the yen.
The price of crude oil was moving lower as traders await cues from the official inventories data, due out later today and the outcome of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' meet on production targets due Friday.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for July delivery, shed $0.31 to $92.82 a barrel. Yesterday, oil settled lower amid demand growth concerns after the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development trimmed its growth projections for the world economy and the International Monetary Fund trimmed China's economic growth for 2013 and 2014.
Wednesday after the market hours, the API said US crude oil inventories jumped to a three-decade high adding 4.40 million barrels and gasoline stocks added 1.94 million barrels in the weekended May 24.
Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said in the parliament today that the central bank will buy long-term government debt under its expanded quantitative easing in 8-10 tranches in June to reduce bond market volatility and push down bond yields across the curve as much as possible.
Eurozone economic confidence strengthened in May, driven by brightening sentiment in all business sectors except for construction, survey results published by the European Commission showed today.
The economic confidence index climbed to 89.4 in May, in line with expectations, from 88.6 in April.
Industrial confidence came in at -13, up from -13.8 a month ago. The indicator gained strength from a much more positive assessment of the current level of overall order books.
The Canadian dollar dropped to 1.0387 against the greenback by 8:10 am ET, shedding by more than 0.5 percent gains from a 2-day high of 1.0330 hit earlier in the session. Further selling pressure could lead the pair re-test the 1.04 support level in the near-term.
Against the euro, the Canadian dollar slipped to a session's low of 1.3452 around 8:15 am ET. The euro-loonie pair was trading at 1.3440 around 8:20 am ET, compared to 1.3391 hit late New York Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Canadian dollar climbed to a session's high of 98.15 against the yen around 7:45 am ET as the latter fell across the board as a rally in majority of European equities prompted traders to flee from low-yielding yen. Next likely resistance for the loonie-yen pair is seen around the 99.0 level.
Looking ahead, Canada's current account for the first quarter, industrial & raw materials product price indices for April are due out shortly.
Across the boarder, traders look ahead to key US economic data in the upcoming session. Pending Home Sales are predicted to rise 1.5 percent in April, the second revision of the first-quarter GDP is seen confirming the 2.5 percent annual growth and weekly jobless claims are forecast to remain unchanged from last week's 340,000.
