BLBG:Canadian Dollar Gains for Third Day Before Housing Starts Report
The Canadian dollar rose for a third day on speculation the country will continue its run of stronger-than-forecast economic data with a report projected to show housing starts in August were almost at July’s level.
The currency strengthened against the majority of its 16 most-traded peers as a Russian bid to get Syria to surrender its chemical weapons that may avert a U.S. attack boosted demand for riskier assets. The currencies of Canada’s commodity-exporting peers, Australia and New Zealand, appreciated as Chinese data added to signs of economic recovery in the world’s second largest economy. Today’s report on Canadian housing starts follows data on building permits and employment growth, which both exceeded analysts’ forecasts.
“The market is looking for a strong number anyway, so some of that is priced in,” said David Bradley, director of foreign-exchange trading at Scotia Capital Inc., a unit of Bank of Nova Scotia, by phone from Toronto. “Just because we’ve got housing starts out of Canada today, which is probably going to be a relatively decent number, I think the Canadian dollar probably doesn’t strengthen too much more today.”
The loonie, as the Canadian dollar is known for the image of the aquatic bird on the C$1 coin, rose 0.4 percent to C$1.0331 per U.S. dollar at 7:59 a.m. in Toronto, the highest level since Aug. 19. One loonie buys 96.79 U.S. cents.
Construction began on 190,000 homes in August, almost the expansion of 192,900 in July, according to the median estimate of a Bloomberg survey of 21 economists.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Altstedter in Toronto at aaltstedter@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net
