BLBG: Canada’s Dollar Advances to Highest Level in Almost Three Weeks
By Chris Fournier and Ruby Madren-Britton
Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Canada’s dollar rose to the highest level in almost three weeks against its U.S. counterpart after reports in China showed the economy is advancing, burnishing the global growth outlook and spurring stock and commodity gains.
The Canadian currency appreciated to C$1.0433, the strongest level since Oct. 22. Gold rallied to a record, crude oil topped $80 a barrel and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed to a 13-month high. The Canadian dollar tends to rise and fall with stocks and commodity prices.
“It looks to be a risk-on sort of environment, with the Chinese data mainly positive overnight and gold and equities up,” said Shaun Osborne, chief currency strategist in Toronto at Toronto-Dominion Bank, Canada’s second-largest bank.
The Canadian currency strengthened 0.5 percent to C$1.0446 per U.S. dollar at 10:32 a.m. in Toronto, from C$1.0495 yesterday. One Canadian dollar buys 95.73 U.S. cents. Canadian bond markets are closed for the Remembrance Day holiday.
Canada’s dollar rose the most against the greenback of all of the 16 most-traded currencies tracked by Bloomberg. It touched C$1.0207 on Oct. 15, the strongest level in more than a year, before falling for more than two weeks on speculation the central bank would take measures to stem its advance.
China’s industrial production rose 16.1 percent in October from a year ago, the most since March 2008, the statistics bureau said in Beijing today. Retail sales gained an annual 16.2 percent last month, it said. The trade surplus almost doubled from September, to $24 billion, as the slide in exports eased to the slowest pace this year.
Gold for December delivery rose as much as 1.5 percent to a record $1,118.60 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex division. Crude oil for December delivery rose 1.1 percent to $79.90 a barrel in New York after touching $80.10. Raw materials account for more than half of Canada’s export revenue, and crude is the nation’s biggest export.
The S&P 500 Index gained as much as 1.1 percent to 1,105.37.
To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Fournier in Montreal at cfournier3@bloomberg.net; Ruby Madren-Britton in New York at rmadrenbritt@bloomberg.net
