The U.S. dollar recovered from a loss on Wednesday after reports the Omicron coronavirus variant is spreading and oil prices turned down, hurting commodity currencies.
The dollar index against major currencies was up 01% in the afternoon in New York after having fallen 0.3% in the morning. The greenback gained against the dollars of Canada, Australia and New Zealand and against the euro and British pound.
“What you are seeing is a classic risk-off move in FX markets and that means the dollar outperforms against the commodity currencies,” said Erik Bregar, an independent foreign exchange analyst.
The dollar lost to the Japanese yen currency, which is often seen as a safer haven, giving up 0.3% to 112.805.
The shifts underscored the hour-to-hour fragility of foreign exchange rates as traders weigh what the Omicron variant might do to plans that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled on Tuesday to move more quickly to raise U.S. interest rates.
The variant is becoming dominant in South Africa and has appeared in the United States.
“We’ve gotten these conflicting claims about the new variant, and Powell’s comments really threw the markets for a loop,” said Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex.
“People are still pretty nervous,” Chandler said.
The dollar’s rebound started as a report from the Institute for Supply Management came out showing that U.S. manufacturing activity picked up in November amid strong demand for goods, keeping inflation high as factories continued to struggle with pandemic-related shortages of raw materials.
An earlier report on U.S. private payrolls suggested that Friday will bring a “solid jobs report” when the government posts more comprehensive payroll numbers, Chandler said.
“Friday’s U.S. jobs data is the next big thing,” he said.
The greenback is up nearly 7% this year. November was its strongest month since June.
The euro lost 0.2% on the day to $1.1314 at 3:21 pm ET (1507 GMT).
The British pound, often considered a risk-on currency, fell back 0.2% against the dollar after having been up 0.4%. The pound is struggling to recover after reaching its lowest level in nearly a year earlier this week on fears over vaccine effectiveness against the Omicron variant.
The Australian dollar lost 0.4% to $0.7103 and the New Zealand dollar lost 0.3% to $0.6805. [AUD/]
Prior to the tailspin caused by Omicron’s advent, the main driver of exchange rates had been expectations of the different speeds at which central banks will raise interest rates.
In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin was up less than 1% at $57,220 at 3:17 pm ET (2017 GMT).
(Reporting by David Henry in New York; Additional reporting by Joice Alves and Elizabeth Howcroft in London; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Andrea Ricci)
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
