USD/CAD drifting ahead of job reports

The Canadian dollar continues to show limited movement. In the European session, USD/CAD is almost unchanged at 1.3433. We are likely to see stronger movement in the North American session, as both the US and Canada release the November employment reports.

US Nonfarm Payrolls expected to soften

Today’s highlight is the US nonfarm employment report, with a consensus of 200,000 for November. This follows a 261,000 gain in October. The US employment market has been surprisingly resilient, considering the sharp rise in interest rates. The employment market has recently started to cool off, but unless today’s NFP release significantly underperforms, it won’t change the Fed’s view that it is still too early to tell if inflation is on its way down.

Canada’s economy showed a massive gain in jobs in October, with 108,300. This was ten times the estimate of 10,000. November is expected to show a small gain of 5,000, with the employment rate projected to tick higher to 5.3%, up from 5.2%. Canada’s economy is generally performing well, and today’s employment report is the final key release prior to the Bank of Canada’s rate meeting on December 7th. The Bank of Canada has been aggressive in its tightening, in order to curb inflation which is running at a 6.9% clip. Like the Fed, the BoC is looking for signs that inflation has peaked, but until then we can expect oversize rate hikes to continue, with a 50-bp hike likely next week.

Jerome Powell’s speech on Wednesday sent the US dollar sharply lower, as Powell’s comments were not as hawkish as feared. Powell said that more evidence was needed to show that inflation was falling, and reiterated that rates would likely rise higher than the Fed has projected in September. Still, investors chose to focus on Powell’s broad hint that the Fed would ease the pace of rates next week with a 50-bp move, after four straight hikes of 75 bp.

USD/CAD technical

• USD/CAD has support at 1.3398 and 1.3300.

• There is resistance at 1.3478 and 1.3576.