USD index gets hit, but CAD is hit even harder

Today's expected range for the Canadian Dollar against the major currencies:

US Dollar             1.2700-1.2800

Euro                     1.4350-1.4450

Sterling                1.6950-1.7050

Well so much for a quiet thanksgiving holiday period, fears over the discovery of a new variant first seen in Southern Africa and showing up recently in Hong Kong has sent markets spiralling lower this morning. Europe and the UK have now imposed travel bans on many African countries and stocks in Asia were on pace to track their worst day since March of this year, European stock markets were all down over 2% this morning and the Dow Jones opening (after being closed yesterday) is tracking to open lower by almost 750 points at the moment, it is going to be an ugly day on North American markets. Travel stocks were hit especially hard as fears of reduced travel caused by this new variant have hit the sector hard.

The US Dollar index is much weaker this morning as investors moved into other safe haven currencies like the Swiss Franc and Japanese Yen, both EUR.USD and GBP.USD are each much higher and USD.CHF fell over 100 points quickly on the back of the weakness in the Greenback. The same cannot be said about our poor Canadian Dollar which could not take advantage of the weaker Greenback but has been hit hard by a big overnight drop in commodity prices, the Loonie was especially driven lower by the fall in the oil price which is now trading at $74 a barrel. That is almost a $4 drop overnight in the oil price, I am sure we will be hearing from OPEC over the weekend.

Nothing on the calendar today so we will see how bad the carnage gets on Wall Street. USD.CAD opens the day at the 1.2750 (0.7843) level and given the current environment I can't see it pulling back much strength today. More likely that the currency pair could hit 1.2800 (0.7813) at some point during the day.