Canadian dollar’s top forecasters say loonie’s future not as bad as it looks
The outlook for the Canadian dollar has become far too gloomy, according to the currency’s top forecaster.
Lloyds Banking Group Plc expects the loonie to bounce after posting its worst start to the year relative to its peers as pessimism lifts over the North American Free Trade Agreement and expectations for rate hikes from the Bank of Canada begin to creep back into the market.
“We’re seeing some progress on the NAFTA front,” said Gajan Mahadevan, a London-based strategist at the bank. “The risk to the Bank of Canada outlook is now probably skewed to the upside, especially after the recent jump in inflation.”
The loonie fell 2.6 per cent against the greenback in the first quarter, lagging 15 other major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, and traded around 78.30 U.S. cents on Friday. It will advance 2.9 per cent to 80.64 U.S. cents by the end of this year and to 83.33 in 2019, according to Lloyds.
The currency has been under pressure this year as the economy slowed and investors cut bets for interest-rate increases. Concerns that negotiations to overhaul NAFTA would fall apart have also weighed on the currency, though as of last week, Lloyds’s optimism was looking well placed.
Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are making progress in NAFTA talks, which have entered “a new, more intensive stage of engagement,” Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said Friday after meeting with her U.S. and Mexican counterparts in Washington. Talks were expected to resume Monday.
Accelerating Inflation
Lloyds is more bullish than other Canadian dollar watchers. The loonie will strengthen to 80 U.S. cents by the end of the year, according to a median of forecasts compiled by Bloomberg. And hedge funds and other speculators last month turned bearish on the currency for the first time since July, according to the data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Investors wager there’s a 23 per cent chance of a rate increase at the central bank’s policy meeting on April 18, swaps trading suggests, down from 40 per cent two weeks ago, while a hike in July isn’t fully priced in. In his latest speech from March 13, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said the central bank’s latest decision to keep interest rates on hold reflected comfort with recent data.
Yet inflation in February accelerated to an annual pace of 2.2 per cent, the highest in three years, even as the economy contracted in January. Data on Friday showed the economy created a higher-than-expected 32,300 jobs in March, keeping the unemployment rate at 5.8 per cent, the lowest in four decades.
Dark Cloud
Global economic growth will remain robust this year, which should help drive crude oil prices higher and support the Canadian dollar, according to Isaah Mhlanga, a Johannesburg-based economist at Rand Merchant Bank, which came in second in the Bloomberg ranking of forecasters. The ranking is based on calls for the first quarter.
Mhlanga sees long-term fair value of the Canadian dollar at around 85.47 U.S. cents and expects the currency to strengthen to 81.96 by the end of the year. He doesn’t expect the Bank of Canada to hike as aggressively as the market anticipates, seeing just one more rate increase this year compared to the market pricing in two.
“If you combine one rate hike and commodity prices picking up, that should be bullish for the Canadian dollar,” he said.
Bears say NAFTA could still unravel and come back to plague the loonie. The currency will probably weaken up to 76.33 U.S. cents over the next two quarters, according to Juan Perez, a Washington-based senior foreign exchange trader and strategist at Tempus Inc. which came third in the ranking of forecasters.
“Because of NAFTA being such a dark cloud and the U.S. economy being resilient and consistent, it weighs on the Canadian dollar in a negative way,” Perez said. “I don’t think the Canadian dollar has much that could improve its situation in the next six months.”
For now though, things are looking up on the future of the North American trade bloc, according to Lloyds’s Mahadevan.
“There was a psychologically based drive to price in a huge degree of risk around NAFTA and after President Trump temporarily exempted Canada from the steel and aluminum tariffs, we’ve seen some of that pullback,” he said.