Investing.com - The U.S. dollar rose to session highs against the Canadian dollar on Thursday after official data showed that number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week dropped to an almost seven year low.
USD/CAD was up 0.32% to 1.0914 from intra-day lows of 1.0889 ahead of the data.
The pair was likely to find support at 1.0866, the session low and resistance at 1.0941, Wednesday’s high.
The dollar found support after the Labor Department reported that the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending April 4 fell by 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 300,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised total of 332,000.
Analysts had expected jobless claims to decline to 320,000.
Continuing jobless claims declined to 2.77 million, the lowest since January 2008.
The greenback fell to three month lows against the Canadian dollar in the previous session after the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s March meeting indicated that an interest rate increase is unlikely to be warranted for some time.
The Fed meeting minutes released on Wednesday showed that policymakers discussed whether to keep interest rates at record lows until inflation moves higher, and did not elaborate on a possible timeframe for when rates could start to rise.
Elsewhere, the loonie, as the Canadian dollar is also known, was lower against the euro, with EUR/CAD rising 0.41% to 1.5136.
In the euro zone, Greece made a successful return to the financial markets on Thursday, raising €3 billion in its first bond auction since 2010, when Athens sought its first bailout.