CANADIAN DOLLAR RECOVERS GROUND ON WEDNESDAY, MARKETS AWAIT US PPE AND RETAIL SALES

• Canadian Dollar pulls back to even against US Dollar midweek.
• Canada brings little data of note to the table.
• US PPE, Retail Sales on offer for Thursday.

The Canadian Dollar (CAD) found some room on the upside at the midweek inflection point as investors await Thursday’s US Producer Price Index (PPI) and Retail Sales figures. The CAD continues to wrestle with the US Dollar (USD), but the Canadian Dollar is on pace to be one of the strongest performers this week as the only major currency entirely in the green.

Go figure! Canada’s high-performance week comes when there’s no meaningful Canadian data on offer. Canadian Manufacturing Sales for January, slated for Thursday, are expected to recover to 0.4% from the previous -0.7%. Canadian Housing Starts come on Friday, expected to tick up slightly to 230K from 223.6K. Neither print is expected to draw much attention, if any.

After Thursday’s US PPE and Retail Sales, Friday will wrap things up with another round of University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment and Expectation prints for March. UoM Consumer Sentiment is forecast to hold steady at 76.9, while UoM Consumer Inflation Expectations last showed US consumers expected annual inflation to land somewhere around 2.9%.