Loonie flat as BoC maintains tone on currency

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(Reuters)

By Frank Pingue

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's currency pared earlier losses and was flat versus the U.S. dollar on Thursday morning as the Bank of Canada's Monetary Policy Report did not alter the tone the bank delivered earlier this week when it said it was concerned about the strong Canadian dollar.

Still, the currency did not stage a significant rally as traders lost their appetite for riskier assets after some disappointing corporate earnings and instead piled into the U.S. dollar.

In its Monetary Policy Report, the Bank of Canada repeated comments made early this week that a stronger Canadian dollar would more than fully offset recent favorable economic developments.

Some market players had braced for the chance the central bank would take a stronger stance against Canadian dollar appreciation because it is crimping economic recovery.

"What they said this morning had already been said so there was no additional Canadian dollar-negative spin here," said Shaun Osborne, chief currency strategist at TD Securities. "This week was still generally a sign that they are still very concerned with the Canadian dollar."

The Canadian dollar rose as high as C$1.0450 to the U.S. dollar, or 95.69 U.S. cents, after the MPR, from about C$1.0517 to the U.S. dollar, or 95.08 U.S. cents, before.

At 11:10 a.m. EDT, the Canadian unit was at C$1.0463 to the U.S. dollar, or 95.57 U.S. cents, compared with C$1.0460 to the U.S. dollar, or 95.60 U.S. cents, at Wednesday's close.

Keeping the currency from rallying further was a sour mood on equity markets due to some disappointing corporate results and Chinese data that showed the economy there rose 8.9 percent in the third quarter, short of some of the more optimistic predictions.

Canadian bond prices pared some of their losses and were mostly flat across the curve on Thursday morning.

(Editing by Peter Galloway)