The yen dropped to a new one-month low and sterling hit a six-week high in holiday-thin trading on Thursday, after investors overnight had turned back towards riskier currencies and equities.
The moves seemed to be linked to recent improved sentiment as many governments resist imposing new, widespread lockdowns, even as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus surges.
Reuters data shows global COVID-19 infections hit a record high over the past seven-days.
“Markets continue to price in finishing Omicron fears thanks to low hospitalisations. That has encouraged investors out of defensive positioning and back into the global recovery trade,” said Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst for Asia Pacific at Oanda.
The Japanese currency was fetching 115.05 per dollar, its lowest in a month and not too far from its November trough of 115.51, a four-and-a-half-year low. Halley also attributed the yen’s weakness to Japanese investors deploying cash offshore.
Sterling reached as high as $1.3505, its best mark in six weeks, before meeting resistance and falling back. The riskier Australian dollar continued to inch higher to $0.72585.
The euro slipped 0.15% to $1.333 after touching a month high on Wednesday.
The shift away from the safe haven yen and towards the Australian dollar was also in keeping with moves in other asset classes. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at all-time highs on Wednesday, the latter rising for a sixth session. [.N]
But with many traders away ahead of the year-end, analysts cautioned against reading too much into the moves, and rising U.S. yields helped put a floor under the dollar, preventing sharp price swings.
Benchmark 10-year yields reached 1.56% on Wednesday, the highest since Nov. 29, in U.S. trading after the Treasury sold $56 billion in seven-year notes to weak demand. [US/]
They last yielded 1.5462%.
The Turkish lira was at 12.7 per dollar having fallen 6.9% on Wednesday in another volatile day.
Despite surging more than 50% last week following state-backed market interventions, it has lost 40% of its value this year. However, Turkey’s Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati said on Wednesday that the current swings in the lira were not worrying and that it would return to normal levels.
Bitcoin steadied after two days of losses. The world’s largest cryptocurrency was last around $46,700, having been trending lower since hitting an all-time high of $69,000 in November.
(Reporting by Alun John in Hong Kong, Editing by Himani Sarkar & Shri Navaratnam)
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.
