Canada: Retail Sales rise by 1.1% in April vs. 0.2% expected

Retail Sales in Canada increased at a stronger pace than expected in April.
New Housing Price Index rises 0.1% in May, first increase since August 2022.
USD/CAD remains around 1.3210/20, marginally lower for the day.

Matías Salord FXStreet

Statistics Canada reported on Wednesday that Retail Sales rose by 1.1% on a monthly basis in April. This reading came in higher than the market expectation for an increase of 0.2%.

“Core retail sales—which exclude gasoline stations and fuel vendors and motor vehicle and parts dealers—increased 1.5% in April. In volume terms, retail sales increased 0.3% in April”, Statistics Canada noted in its publication. Excluding motor vehicle and parts dealers sales advanced 1.3%.

"Statistics Canada is providing an advance estimate of retail sales, which suggests that sales increased 0.5% in May. Owing to its early nature, this figure will be revised. This unofficial estimate was calculated based on responses received from 40.6% of companies surveyed. The average final response rate for the survey over the previous 12 months was 89.2%."

A different report showed a “slight uptick in new home prices in Canada in May”. The New Housing Price Index increased 0.1% month over month in May, its first increase since August 2022, surpassing expectations of 0%.

Market reaction

The USD/CAD remained steady, hovering around 1.3210/20 following the upbeat report. At the same time, Federal Reserve Chair Powell's speech was released and strengthened the US Dollar somewhat.

Author

Matías Salord

FXStreet

Matías started in financial markets in 2008, after graduating in Economics. He was trained in chart analysis and then became an educator. He also studied Journalism. He started writing analyses for specialized websites before joining FXStreet.

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