Canada Employment Change - Big Deviation, Big Spike and Continuation - like the old days

This Thrusday afternoon, at 13:30 GMT (8:30 EST) the Employment figures were released out of Canada. This data is normally on Friday's but it is Easter tomorrow, it also is normally at 7:00 EST but the BOE was doing there Interest Rate decision at that time so it was good they moved it to the 8:30am slot. Finally also normally NFP is only 90 minutes after this data, so it was good it wasn't today because the Canadian Dollar had time to just trend and continue without any worry of NFP coming along and changing everything in terms of the US DOllar or the Japanese Yen or Risk sentiment in general.

The market had been risk off in general..bad Spanish bond auction yesterday sparked renewed concerns and the Euro extended the sell-off already instigated by the Fed Minutes on Tuesday.

Anyhow here is that Canadian Data:


Canada Net Change in Employment
Estimates- Median: +10.5k Average: +13.2k Low: +5.0k High: +40.0k
Actual: +82.3k Prior: -2.8k No Revision

Canada Unemployment Rate
Estimates- Median: +7.4% Average: +7.4% Low: +7.4% High: +7.5%
Actual: +7.2% Prior: +7.4% No Revision

Canada Full Time Employment Change
Actual: +70.0k Prior: +9.1k

Canada Part Time Employment Change
Actual: +12.4k Prior: -12.0k

Here are some 10 second charts:

The USDJPY which has been selling off since reaching 84.00 on March 15th, did take a turn back up and thus supported further gains on CADJPY.

A rumor of a major European bank in trouble which might need to be nationalised hit the wires about 10-15 minutes after the release, this helped the sell-off in the EURCAD and also made it more difficult for the USDCAD to sell-off. But this was probably just some BS the brokers paid the news wires to send down to the retail side, and it soon washed off and EURUSD bounced back up after hitting a significant fib level at 1.3050.

As this final 1 minute chart on the USDCAD forex pair shows the move developed some good momentum which continued for about 3 hours.

CAD Ivey PMI higher

Canadian Ivey PMI comes out at 59.9 versus 54.4 expected and USDCAD moves further down in Canadian Dollar strength after the strength initially caused by the BOC Statement at the Interest Rate Decision. Basically killing all expectations of a cut early in 2012. With GDP at 3.5% and CPI at 2.9% this PMI readings shows despite the global slowdown Canada at least is not doing so badly.

Canadian Interest Rates Decision - No hint of rate cut ahead

Some analysts were expecting some signal from the Bank of Canada's Carney to cut rates sometime in the new year. These rumors were squashed during today's announcment.

Instead they said that:

European recession to be deeper than thought
2nd half of 2011 slightly stronger than anticipated
Inflation slightly firmer than expect; to ease going forward
Additional measures will be needed to contain European crisis

USDCAD sold off from 1.0200 to 1.0120 quickly as the New York cash equity indices opened and the CAD Ivey PMI was released.

Canadian CPI - Big Deviation Spike but Reversal

The Consumer Price Index, the major gauge of inflation was released out of Canada this Tuesday Nov. 23rd at noon GMT (7am EST). This has been a great report to trade a few years ago but recently it will only cause a short-lived spike. However this month there were quite signicant deviation on all 4 of the main numbers that come out with this report. There are yearly and monthly figures for both a Core Number, which excludes volatile items like energy and food, and a Headline number. Here is the Data:

CANADA OCT CPI CORE M/M: 0.4% V 0.1%E; Y/Y: 1.8% V 1.5%E - No revisions
CANADA OCT CONSUMER PRICE INDEX M/M: 0.4% V 0.2%E; Y/Y: 2.4% V 2.2%E - No revisions

As the 1st chart shows the USDCAD did spike down from near 1.0190 to 1.0165, so there was money to be made trading the spike using the Secret News Weapon, and members in the Profitmonger Live Online Forex Traderoom made money trading it. Price bounced quickly back up to the 61% within the 1st 30 seconds after the news release at around 1.0185 and moved back to below the 38% of the same fib move at around 1.0170 for a quick +15 pip afterspike move. Price did not continue down however and came back to the same 61% level at 1.0185 and held there for over 5 minutes, definately not a good sign. Traders were aware that there was alot of risk aversion in the markets as not only was the situation with EuroZone peripheral debt issues causing this but also there were some shot fired near the border between North and South Korea and alot of tough talk. In risk aversion situations the USD can strengthen as it is a safe haven currency, because it is the biggest most liquid market it can absorb all those in risky assets who want to get home fast.

....So to judge the performance of this CPI release based on what happened to the USDCAD pair is not right, so also included is the 1 minute chart of the EURCAD. As we can see on this chart, this news performed exceptionally well for the afterspike. After about 10 minutes of the release price retraced to the 50% of the previous swing, which included the news spike move, as price was moving down already heading into the release. From this 1.3808 level prices moved down all day as the situation in the EuroZone grew worse as various Euro ministers said things which weakened confidence in the single pair, including Angela Merkel. In fact the trade could have been held for the next day as well as it reached a total of +350 pips.