Trading the Canadian Retail Sales Report

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The Canadian retails sales indicator is a measure of retail sales and normally we will see two figures, the “headline” number and a number excluding automobile sales.
A retail sales reading which is higher than the market expects is bullish for the Canadian currency and a retails sales reading which is lower than the market expects is bearish for the Canadian currency.

Retail sales reports provides an important look into the consumer spending and confidence levels.
Consumer spending is critical to economic growth so traders should keep a close eye on this report and measure the trends of this indicator.

The data released will typically cover the prior months data.
Its quality as a forecaster of inflationary demand can cause traders to reconsider the chance of Fed to reduce or increase rates. For example, a razor-sharp increase of retail sales in the center of a business cycle may be followed by a short-term increase in interest rates by the Fed in the hope of reducing possible inflation.

If retail sales development is slowing down, this could mean consumers are not investing at past amounts, and could indicate a economic downturn due to the considerable part personal spending performs in the health of the economic climate.

One of the most important components that traders should be aware when trading the news report is to look at how far off the revealed number is from the so-called forecast number, or "street number". Generally, the markets do not like uncertainty, so a reading that is greater than predicted, even when the economic climate is performing well, could trigger a big move in price.



Current support levels at the time of this writing
(daily chart) 1.0076, 1.0051

Current resistance levels at the time of this writing
(1 hour chart) 1.0096, 1.0161

Canadian Retail Sales “headline” expected 0.3% . previous 1.0%
Canadian Retail Sales “core” expected 0.2% . previous 0.7%

On Tuesday January 24 2012 when this number is released there are no other reports at the same time.

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