TORONTO: The Canadian dollar climbed to a near one-week high on Thursday, tracking the euro and other risk assets higher after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi pledged to do whatever was necessary to protect the euro zone from collapse.
"Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough," he told an investment conference in London.
Draghi's comments were his boldest to date and helped reassure a market waiting for the ECB to act on lowering unreasonably high government borrowing costs, some of which have spiraled to unsustainable levels.
"The broad theme, it's not something that's confined to the Canadian dollar obviously, is that risk is clearly back on this morning and this is all really to do with Europe," said Chris Applin, senior dealer at Canadian Forex in London.
At 8:05 a.m. (1205 GMT), the Canadian dollar was at C$1.0074 versus the US dollar, or 99.27 US cents. The currency was at its firmest level since July 20 and decidedly higher than Wednesday's North American session finish at C$1.0152 against the greenback, or 98.50 US cents.
Applin pegged the rest of the day's range between C$1.0020-C$1.0100, but cautioned that markets are still very fickle.
"I just think that this move is maybe premature given obviously nothing fundamentally changed here; Draghi has just come in and just done some jawboning basically," he said.
"It's not like we're any further down the line on euro bonds or even a kind of banking supervisory body ... but I think markets will look for the slightest hint that the ECB are willing to do a little bit more."
Canadian bond prices retreated across the curve in the risk-on move with the two-year bond down 6 Canadian cents to yield 0.990 percent and the benchmark 10-year bond 31 Canadian cents lower to yield 1.626 percent.
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