Markets and Economy

February 2021 Financial Markets Update

A complete wrap-up across FX, interest rates, and energy commodities.

Highlights

Our Financial Markets Team has come together to provide a USDCAD forecast. Overall, the team sees CAD as the best proxy to capture the global growth/reflation trade as well as a strong candidate to take advantage of the structural headwinds facing the USD—which show little sign of abating anytime soon.

Summary

  1. The thesis of a strong global cyclical growth phase has underpinned our outlook for USDCAD over the past year and
    that theme has largely played out: Commodity prices are stronger, fiscal stimulus has increased, and vaccine rollouts
    have (mostly) surprised to the upside.
  2. This has led to growth projections being upgraded significantly from earlier this year and no more so than from the
    Bank of Canada who became the first major G10 central bank to adopt a hawkish stance at their recent April policy
    meeting.
  3. In contrast, the Fed has remained on the sidelines which has led to CAD rallying to three-year highs. Given CAD’s
    leverage to commodity prices, high positive correlation to global growth, and strong housing market we expect the
    BoC to remain under pressure to maintain a vigilant outlook on interest rates relative to other major central banks in
    the coming years.
  4. Furthermore, the USD remains under longer-term structural pressure from record trade and budget deficits - deficits
    that imply a weaker USD as the US imports more than it exports, and spends more than it brings in.
  5. As a result, we continue to see CAD appreciation as the most probable outcome and move our USDCAD targets
    lower with a 2021 year-end target of 1.1700.
  6. Key risks are US growth outperformance pulling the Fed off the sidelines and pushing US rates higher, and a quicker than anticipated supply response across commodity markets particularly in copper and oil.

View full version - May 2021 ATB Financial Markets Group USDCAD Forecast

USDCAD: It's Still a Growth Story, The Redux.

Financial Market Contacts:

1-855-232-3939
 

News you can use

Subscribe to ATB's Market newsletter to get expert analysis of the markets. And the best part? It's free.

Need help?

Our ATB Business Solutions team will be happy to assist.