Summary:

  • Canadian dollar traders will be offered the newest data pertaining to retail sales as well as price growth
  • Weekly oil rigs report by Baker Hughes the sole reading of note for oil traders today
  • Some central bank speakers being worth watching for during the day

The Friday’s calendar is not impressive to say the least as just CAD traders can find something interesting for themselves. On the other hand, there are several central bank speeches and as always it’s worth keeping a close eye on them (just notice what happened yesterday when Carney talked about the rate hikes backdrop).

1:30 pm BST – Canadian CPI and retail sales: The set of releases coming from the Canadian economy appears to be one of the most important for the CAD this month. The currency has been trading on the back foot so far this week while the major blow was dealt by the Bank of Canada (it was not understandable in our view). The base case in our eyes assumes the CAD could resume rising against its US counterpart despite a gargantuan discount seen in its oil grade (WCS) which cuts back on money inflows to the budget. Interest rate traders seeing more than 70% chances to a rate hike in July, and they could be right if the economy evolves as the Bank predicts. Price growth in March is expected to have accelerated to 2.4% yoy. In turn, retail sales for February should show 0.5% and 0.3% in a monthly basis as for the headline and the core (ex-auto) measures respectively.

6:00 pm BST – Oil rigs count: The last week brought a healthy increase in US rigs and given the continued price increase one can expect this trend to keep on unfolding going forward. Although, in the short-run it might be played down, there is no doubt that US shale production is continuously solidifying its position in the market and therefore sooner or later it could backfire the OPEC.

Central bank speakers today:

  • 10:30 am BST – BoE’s Saunders
  • 2:40 pm BST – Fed’s Evans
  • 4:00 pm BST – Riksbank’s Ingves
  • 4:25 pm BST – BoC’s Wilkins
  • 5:00 pm BST – PBoC’s Yi

link do file download linkCAD bears are striving to smash an important resistance, but today’s set of data could spoil the fun. Source: xStation5