USD/CAD steadily climbs beyond 1.3200 handle, fresh session tops

The USD/CAD pair ticked higher during the early North-American session, with bulls now looking to extend the attempted recovery further beyond the 1.3200 handle.

After an initial dip to an intraday low level of 1.3162 - back closer to near four-month lows set in the previous session, the pair managed to find some support at lower levels and ticked higher on the last trading day of the week. However, a combination of negative forces failed to provide any strong impetus or assist the pair to register any meaningful recovery.

The US Dollar remained on the defensive in the wake of the latest dovish shift by the FOMC, clearly indicating that it remains ready to ease monetary policy to support economic growth and combat subdued inflationary pressure. This coupled with the ongoing bullish run in Crude Oil prices, fueled by escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, underpinned the commodity-linked currency - Loonie and further collaborated towards capping the intraday uptick. 

Meanwhile, the disappointing release of Canadian monthly retail sales figures, coming in to show a sharp deceleration to 0.1% in April as compared to the previous month's upwardly revised solid growth of 1.3% and worse than 0.3% expected, seemed to be the only factor lending some support to the major. 

Friday's economic docket also features the release of flash manufacturing PMI and existing home sales data from the US, which might now be looked upon for some short-term trading opportunities on the last day of the week. 

Technical levels to watch