TORONTO: The Canadian dollar weakened against its US counterpart on Friday to extend this week’s decline, as oil prices fell and the greenback broadly rallied.
The loonie was trading 0.7% lower at 1.3035 to the greenback, or 76.72 US cents, after touching its weakest since May 13 at 1.3045.
For the week, the currency was on track to decline 1.9%, which would be its biggest weekly decline since August last year, as investors worried that aggressive tightening by central banks, including Wednesday’s three-quarter-percentage-point rate hike by the Federal Reserve, could derail economic growth.
The US dollar jumped against a basket of major currencies on Friday as the Bank of Japan’s decision to buck the recent wave of tightening weighed on the Japanese yen.
Worries about an economic slowdown weighed on the price of oil, one of Canada’s major exports. US crude prices were down 2.7% at $114.41 a barrel.
In domestic data, the pace of Canadian home price growth slowed in May, edging off April’s record high, but prices still rose both on the month and on the year, the National Bank Composite House Price Index showed.
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