Commodity-linked loonie slides to 9-month low

Updated 01 Mar, 2020

At 3:39 p.m. (2039 GMT), the Canadian dollar was trading 0.1% lower at 1.3408 to the greenback, or 74.58 US cents. The currency touched its weakest intraday level since June, last year at 1.3465.

For the week, the loonie fell 1.4%, its biggest weekly decline in more than a year, while it was down 1.3% for the month.

Speculators have raised their bullish bets on the Canadian dollar for the first time in five weeks, data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Reuters calculations showed. As of Feb. 25, net long positions had increased to 14,624 contracts from 7,817 in the prior week.

Canadian government bond yields fell across a steeper yield curve in sympathy with US Treasuries. The two-year yield declined 9.6 basis points to 1.152%, its lowest since July 2017.

The gap between Canada's two-year yield and its US equivalent widened by 13.7 basis points to a spread of 28.2 basis points in favor of the Canadian bond, its biggest gap since January 2015.

Copyright Reuters, 2020

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