Greenback rises vs loonie despite downbeat US jobless claims data; euro under selling pressure

On Thursday the U.S. dollar climbed against its Canadian peer, despite data indicating that U.S. jobless claims rose unexpectedly last week. 

The euro stays under broad selling pressure after the ECB statement.

The U.S. Department of Labor said in a report the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending February 28 increased by 7,000 to 320,000 from the previous week’s total of 313,000, while economists had expected initial jobless claims to fall by 18,000 to 295,000 last week.

In a separate report, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said non-farm business sector labor productivity decreased by 2.2% in the final three months of 2014, better than expectations for a 2.3% decline and compared to a preliminary estimate of a 1.8% decline.

In the third quarter, U.S. non-farm productivity rose by 3.7%.

USD/CAD hit 1.2476 during early U.S. trade, the session high; the pair subsequently consolidated at 1.2464, gaining 0.28%. The pair was likely to find support at 1.2359, the low of February 17 and resistance at 1.2565, the high of March 2.

The loonie was higher against the euro, with EUR/CAD edging down 0.21% to 1.3740.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi confirmed that the ECB will begin purchasing euro zone government bonds on March 9 under its new quantitative easing program, and thus sent the single currency under broad selling pressure.

The combined monthly asset purchases will amount to €60 billion per month and is expected to run until September 2016, or until the ECB sees that inflation is on a “sustained path” to its target of close to, but below, 2% in the medium term.

More to that, the ECB raised its growth forecast for this year to 1.5% from 1.0% previously, followed by faster growth in 2016 and 2017. However, it cut its inflation forecast for 2015, saying it now expects inflation to be flat, down from 0.7% previously. It then expects inflation to increase to 1.5% in 2016, up from 1.3% and 1.8% in 2017.