Since Friday, we've seen the Canadian dollar do very well against the crosses, particularly against the euro and the sterling. That seems to be driving most of the Canadian dollar gains right now.
That allowed the Canadian dollar to basically move back toward the 14-year high that we saw in early March.
Last week we saw oil give back a sizable amount of recent gains and I just think that given the fact that we have seen some weakness in oil prices as a result of that, that's weighed on the Canadian dollar as well,
Just given the fact the market wasn't able to push the Canadian dollar above that 12-year high that was set last November, I think that caused a few people to look at taking some profits on some of their long Canadian dollar positions.
I think we've seen a little bit of a Canadian dollar rally on some of the crosses, so that's been a benefit, and there's been some corporate interest to sell the U.S. dollar (versus Canada) in a fairly thin market.
I think it's more of a short-term thing. I don't think it is something that really indicates that the dollar has reached a peak and it's about to depreciate significantly.
We have not seen much reaction but given the elevated level of unit labor costs as well as the lower-than-expected print of initial claims data, that would be viewed as dollar supportive and may see the dollar rally over the short term.
The rise of the Canadian dollar is partly driven by the short-term selling pressure of the U.S. dollar after the tape came out.
The Canadian dollar is grinding lower, playing catch-up with the price correction that we saw in oil last week.
The interest rate side is probably giving the Canadian dollar some support against other currencies.
In terms of correlations, natural gas has tended to have the highest correlation with the Canadian dollar over the last year or so.
And as result of that, we're seeing more people exit long U.S. dollar positions that had been built up during 2005.