The Canadian dollar exchange traded fund is depreciating as the country’s oil exports slow and the U.S. dollar strengthens on speculation of the Federal Reserve scaling back stimulus measures.
The CurrencyShares Canadian Dollar Trust (NYSEArca: FXC) is down another 0.6% Tuesday and has declined 0.6% over the past month. FXC is designed to track the price of the Canadian dollar through a deposit account denominated in the Canadian currency.
The U.S. dollar currently trades at around 1.04 Canadian dollars.
“The Canadian dollar is underperforming as commodity prices continue to dip and the U.S. dollar gets stronger amid eventual Fed tapering talk, which has weighed on risk assets,” Dean Popplewell, head analyst in Toronto at the online currency-trading firm Oanda Corp., said in a Bloomberg article. The recent durable-goods report “supports the idea of potential pullback from the Fed. And commodities are getting weaker, which suggests the currency is likely to continue to be soft.” [Treasury, Dollar ETFs in Focus on Bernanke]
Market observers also believe that the continued risk-on trade is working against commodity currencies, like the Canadian dollar.
“The risk sentiment and volatility has taken some of the edge out of commodity currencies,” Shaun Osborne, chief currency strategist at Toronto-Dominion Bank’s TD Securities unit, said in the article. “Canada’s general trend has been strong growth, but the U.S. is looking cheap as the economy turns and we get more whispers of tapering, and that will continue to reflect on the Canadian dollar.