USD / CAD claims the DMA of 200 and 1.2500 amid disappointing US economic data.

• The Loonie loses ground against the dollar amid the release of worse-than-expected US economic data.
• US retail sales suffered the biggest contraction in 10 months.
• USD / CAD Technical Outlook: Bullish bias, although the pair is above the 200 DMA.

The USD / CAD it rises during the American session after the December retail sales release showed a deeper contraction than expected. At the time of writing, USD / CAD is trading at 1.2528, up 0.06% during the American session.

Meanwhile, the US dollar index, an indicator of the value of the dollar against a basket of six pairs, is recovering 0.15%, close to the 95.00 level. At the same time, the Western Texas Intermediate (WTI), whose price influences the Canadian dollar linked to oil, is up 1.56%, trading at $ 83.16 per barrel, although it failed to support the CAD.

Retail sales in the US contracted in December

Before the opening of Wall Street, the US Department of Commerce published Retail Sales for December, which suffered the largest contraction in 10 months, at 1.9%. In addition, sales excluding cars and gasoline, for the same month, fell 2.5%, while in the previous month they contracted 0.1%.

Minutes after retail sales were revealed, US industrial production in December contracted 0.1%, below the 0.3 increase estimated by economists polled by Reuters.

That would leave USD / CAD traders waiting for January’s University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment at its preliminary reading, expected at 70.0.

USD / CAD Price Forecast: Technical Outlook

According to the USD / CAD daily chart, the pair is “still” biased to the upside. However, on Thursday, USD / CAD fell below the 200 daily moving average (DMA), which stands at 1.2501, hitting a daily low at 1.2453. However, USD / CAD buyers entered the market, capped the decline and recovered the 200 DMA, leaving the trend intact.

The first USD / CAD top would be the daily high on January 12 at 1.2580. A breakout of the latter would expose 1.2600, followed by the 100 DMA at 1.2523.

On the contrary, to the downside, the first support of the pair would be the 200 DMA. A daily close below could cause the pair to fall to the low of the cycle of November 10, 2021 at 1.2386, but would need to overcome some obstacles in the way down. The second support would be the daily low on January 13 at 1.2453, followed by 1.2400 and the November pivot low mentioned above.

Additional technical levels