BLBG: Canadian Currency Appreciates for Fifth Day as Crude Oil Climbs
Canada’s dollar rose to the highest level since August 2008 after crude oil, the nation’s largest export, rose above $75 a barrel and the U.S. dollar slumped.
“Oil certainly is a driver of Canadian-dollar strength,” said Christian Lawrence, a foreign-exchange strategist in London at RBC Capital Markets, a unit of Canada’s biggest bank. “U.S. dollar weakness has also been a driver of today’s move.”
The Canadian dollar, strengthening for the fifth straight day, gained as much as 0.6 percent to C$1.0253 per U.S. dollar, the highest level since Aug. 1, 2008, and was up 0.4 percent to C$1.0282 at 8:19 a.m. in Toronto. It closed yesterday at C$1.0319. One Canadian dollar buys 97.26 U.S. cents.
Crude oil for November delivery rose as much as 1.4 percent to $75.17 a barrel, the highest since Oct. 21, 2008, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
A break by oil through “strong resistance” at about $75 a barrel could spark a rally in the resource and push the Canadian dollar “one step closer to parity” with the U.S. dollar, Lawrence said in a separate research note today. Canada’s currency last traded equal with its U.S. counterpart in July 2008.
Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the benchmark for U.S. stocks, rose 1.3 percent as Intel Corp.’s sales forecast and earnings from JPMorgan Chase & Co. beat analysts’ estimates.
