USD/CAD: BoC to give an encouraging tailwind for the loonie- TDS

Statisticians at TD Securities look for the CAD to maintain a supportive tailwind after the Bank of Canada outlined steps to unwind its remarkable encouragement programs in the weeks ahead.

“The Bank will discontinue all remaining liquidity-focused programs ‘in the coming weeks. Term repo operations will be discontinued generally in mid-May. The CP, corporate bond, and provincial bond programs will not be continued beyond their upcoming prospective expiration dates, as we expected, as system-wide liquidity remained ‘ample’. More importantly, however, Gravelle verified the BoC did not currently plan to sell assets purchased under these programs.”

Gravelle released strong evidence that the BoC would soon begin to reduce its GoC purchases. While Gravelle did not explicitly perform that judgment in April, we do not think it is very hard to connect the dots. Indeed, we continue to look for a reduction in weekly GoC purchases to $3bn at the April policy announcement.

We see that the bounce in USD/CAD had been fairly mild these days even ahead of Tuesday’s event. Interestingly, the move higher had not been able to hold onto a 1.26 handle— at least for very long. While we suspect overall USD direction is likely to dominate, we think USD/ CAD would be one of the better places to sell dollars if we do get a broader pullback in its latest rebound.