TORONTO, March 6 (Reuters) – The commodity-linked Canadian dollar strengthened to a three-week high against its U.S. counterpart on Friday as oil prices jumped and U.S. employment data fell short of expectations.<\/p>\n
\n The loonie was trading 0.5% higher at 1.3610 per U.S. dollar, or 73.48 U.S. cents, after touching its strongest intraday level since February 13 at 1.3598.<\/p>\n
\n For the week, the currency was up 0.2%, as higher oil prices offset safe-haven demand for the greenback.<\/p>\n
\n The loonie posted sharper weekly gains against the other G10 currencies, particularly those of oil importers. Against the euro, it was up 2.1%, marking its biggest weekly advance since February last year.<\/p>\n
\n The price of oil climbed 11% to $89.94 a barrel on Friday as the conflict kept shipping and energy exports through the vital Strait of Hormuz halted.<\/p>\n
\n Oil is one of Canada’s major exports so the price increase could boost Canada’s economy as well as government tax revenues.<\/p>\n
\n “Taken along with the prospects that the Iran conflict is widening and timelines extending, that’s a boost to Canadian treasuries,” said\u00a0Amo Sahota, director at Klarity FX in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
\n “Then of course we have the shapeshifting in U.S. rate projections this week as traders assess higher U.S. inflation risks as well as a disappointing jobs report.”<\/p>\n
\n The U.S. economy unexpectedly shed jobs in February and the unemployment rate increased to 4.4%, potentially hinting at a deterioration in labor market conditions that could put the Federal Reserve in a difficult spot amid rising oil prices.<\/p>\n
\n The U.S. dollar gave back some recent gains against a basket of major currencies and U.S. Treasury yields eased.<\/p>\n
\n Canadian economic data was upbeat.\u00a0The seasonally adjusted Ivey Purchasing Managers Index rose to 56.6 last month from 50.9 in January, posting its highest level since September.<\/p>\n
\n The Canadian 10-year yield was up 2.5 basis points at 3.384%, while the gap between it and the equivalent U.S. rate narrowed by 5 basis points to 73.7 basis points in favor of the U.S. note.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Fergal Smith)<\/p>\n
\n By Fergal Smith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO, March 6 (Reuters) – The commodity-linked Canadian dollar strengthened to a three-week high against its U.S. counterpart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60,123],"class_list":["post-332443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}