USD/CAD drops below 1.4150 as participants remain focused on oil prices

The USD/CAD pair extended its slide after breaking below the 1.4200 mark and erased all of its daily gains as surging crude oil prices allowed the CAD to preserve its strength against the USD. As of writing, the pair was flat on the day at 1.4130.

WTI continues to push higher 

Heightened hopes of OPEC and non-OPEC producers agreeing to reduce the oil output by 10 million barrels per day at the emergency meeting next Monday provided a boost to crude oil prices in the second half of the week. As of writing, the barrel of West Texas Intermediate was trading at $27.30, adding 10.35% on a daily basis.

On the other hand, the data from the US on Friday showed that Nonfarm Payrolls in March declined by 701K amid shutdowns due to the coronavirus outbreak. Furthermore, the Unemployment Rate surged to 4.4% from 3.5% and came in much worse than the market expectation of 3.8%.

Commenting on the data, "the most significant fact about this jobs report is not a novelty – the government conducts its survey on the week including March 12," noted FXStreet analyst Yohay Elam. "That is three weeks ago – ages in the era of COVID-19. Jobless claims for that week jumped to 281,000 from the previous week. However, they leaped to 3.283 million in the following week and soared to 6.648 million in the week ending on March 28." 

However, the market reaction to these figures was surprisingly muted and the US Dollar Index (DXY) didn't have a difficult time staying near the nine-day high it set at 99.82. As of writing, the DXY was up 0.63% on a daily basis at 100.73.

Later in the session, the IHS Markit will release the final reading of its March Services PMI and the ISH will publish its Non-Manufacturing PMI. 

Technical levels to watch for