BLBG: Canada Dollar Trades Near One-Year High as Equity Rally Slows
Canada’s dollar was little changed, trading near the strongest level in more than a year against its U.S. counterpart, as rallies in stocks and crude oil slowed.
The Canadian currency climbed for the past three days, gaining 1 percent yesterday as an interest-rate increase by the Reserve Bank of Australia raised speculation of hikes by other central banks and weakened the greenback.
The Canadian dollar, nicknamed the loonie, traded at C$1.0584 per U.S. dollar at 8:26 a.m. in Toronto, from C$1.0594 yesterday. It earlier touched C$1.0529, the strongest since Sept. 30, 2008. One Canadian dollar purchases 94.49 U.S. cents.
The MSCI World Index, a measure of stocks in 23 developed markets, and futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index were little changed.
Crude oil for November delivery rose as much as 1.2 percent to $71.76 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before trading at $71.28, a 0.6 percent rise. Crude is Canada’s biggest export.
The Bank of Canada is scheduled to auction at noon today C$3.5 billion ($3.3 billion) of 1.25 percent securities due in December 2011.