Investing.com - The U.S. dollar dropped to three-month lows against its Canadian counterpart on Thursday, as disappointing U.S. economic reports fuelled fresh uncertainty over the timing of a rate hike by the Federal Reserve.
USD/CAD hit 1.2232 during early U.S. trade, the pair's lowest since January 21; the pair subsequently consolidated at 1.2234, declining 0.47%.
The pair was likely to find support at 1.2059, the low of January 21 and resistance at 1.2570, Wednesday's high.
In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending April 11 increased by 12,000 to 294,000 from the previous week’s total of 282,000.
Analysts had expected initial jobless claims to fall by 2,000 to 280,000 last week.
Separately, the U.S. Commerce Department said that the number of building permits issued in March declined by 5.7% last month to 1.039 million units from February’s total of 1.102 million. Analysts expected building permits to fall by 2.0% to 1.080 million units in March.
The report also showed that U.S. housing starts rose by 2.0% in March to hit 926,000 units from February’s total of 908,000 units, below expectations for an increase of 15.9% to 1.040 million.
The weak data added to speculation that the Federal Reserve could delay hiking interest rates until late 2015, instead of tightening midyear.
The loonie was steady against the euro, with EUR/CAD at 1.3135.
Later in the day, the U.S. was to release data on manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia region.