The Euro Canadian Dollar exchange rate remains at its highest level since November 2016.
- EUR CAD rate hits 1.44 – CAD EUR trades at 0.69
- Current account narrowing fails to drag EUR down – Waning US confidence supports EUR today
- Canadian Dollar unsettled by further oil price drops – Strong retail sales provide limited support
- Euro advance possible on Eurozone confidence flash – Canadian budget balance due today
After surging to a multi-month best earlier in the week, the EUR CAD exchange rate has been left trending in a narrow range. The latest Eurozone news has seen the bloc’s current account shrink from 46.9bn to 2.5bn in January, representing a 15-month low. Holding the Euro up, however, has been a slide in optimism about US President Donald Trump’s ability to successfully implement promised policy reforms.
While Tuesday’s Canadian retail sales figures for January came in above forecasts, this hasn’t been enough to trigger a CAD EUR rally.
The current limiting factor on the Canadian Dollar has been today’s Canadian federal budget announcement, which is expected to show more debt and higher deficits across the board.
Also weighing on CAD has been another downwards slant in crude oil prices to $47.89 per barrel.
Euro/Canadian Dollar movement over the rest of the week is likely to be tied to Eurozone confidence scores on Thursday along with a number of high-impact PMI releases on Friday.
In the former case, German consumer confidence is forecast to stagnate at 10 points in April but the Eurozone consumer confidence flash has an improvement from -6.2 to -5.7 predicted. While this outcome for the Eurozone would still bring a negative figure, any moves closer to a positive range could still support the Euro.
The biggest of the week’s closing PMI figures will be Germany and the Eurozone’s contributions; predictions have been for a manufacturing and composite drop and a Euro decline is possible as the only positive forecast is for a fractional German services rise.
The Canadian Dollar could be weakened by today’s budget balance if it shows a deficit expansion; the prior figure showed a -1.3bn deficit.
Canada’s final data release on Friday is the nation’s inflation numbers for February. While annual inflation is expected to reprint at 2.1%, CAD may ultimately dip if the monthly result drops from 0.9% to 0.2% as forecast.
Current EUR CAD Interbank Exchange Rates
At the time of writing, the Euro to Canadian Dollar (EUR CAD) exchange rate was trading at 1.44 and the Canadian Dollar to Euro (CAD EUR) exchange rate was trading at 0.69.