How the BoC Rate Decision Moves Forex, on Real Days

The BoC rate decision in forex moved USD/CAD between 11 and 33 pips in the 09:45 candle on the four decisions on our calendar from April to September 2026, against about 8 for an ordinary 09:45 candle. The biggest, on 2 September, closed on its low and was followed by a 105-pip day.

All times here are New York and a candle is named by the time it opens. The wider subject is in news trading, and the neighbouring decisions are in the RBA and Bank of Japan pages.

BoC rate decision forex: what is it, and when does it come?

The Bank of Canada sets its policy interest rate on dates it publishes in advance on its policy interest rate page. On our calendar the rate decision and the monetary policy statement came at 09:45 New York on all four meetings in our sample: 29 April, 10 June, 15 July and 2 September 2026. The press conference came at 10:30 on the two we checked, 15 July and 2 September. As with the Fed and the ECB, a decision day has two known minutes.

USD/CAD also moves on US data, so a decision day is not the Bank's alone. The Bank's minute lands after the 08:30 US releases, which is why CPI mornings sometimes share a page with it.

BoC rate decision forex: how far did USD/CAD move on four decisions?

The 15-minute candle the decision landed on, 09:45.

The median range is 18.9 pips. The median for the 09:45 candle on every day of our sample is 7.8, so a decision candle ran 1.5 to 4 times an ordinary one. It held the day's high or low on two of the four. The count is bankDecisions.BoC in scripts/seo-counts.mjs, and it says nothing of what the Bank decided or how it was expected.

The 10 June row is a reminder that a candle with a low is not always a big candle. The news trading hub has 10 June, with US CPI at 08:30 and the Bank at 09:45 on USD/CAD: the Bank's own minute moved under 4 pips, and the low of the day came four minutes later.

What did one real day look like? USD/CAD, 2 September 2026

On Wednesday 2 September 2026 the Bank's candle was the decisive one, and the morning had already turned before it. Our calendar has US ADP employment at 08:15 and nothing else high impact until the Bank's minute at 09:45.

• 06:15. The high of the day, 1.39393, 16 pips over the Asian high of 1.39234 and 33 over Tuesday's high of 1.39063. London had taken both.
• 08:15 to 09:15. A fade. The 09:15 candle fell 19 pips to 1.38999 before the decision.
• 09:45, the decision. The candle opened at 1.38987, traded 2 pips up and then fell to 1.38678. It closed on its low, 31 pips under its open. Range 33.3 pips.
• 10:30, the press conference. The candle opened at 1.38786 and ranged 18.3 pips, closing at 1.38617, 17 under its open.
• The rest of the day. The 10:45 candle reached 1.38484 and the 11:15 candle 1.38393, the first trade under Monday evening's low of 1.38449. The low of the day, 1.38345, came at 14:30, 105 pips under the high.

We read the 06:15 high as the stop hunt of the morning's two highs, a liquidity sweep in the usual word, and the fall as the crowd's buy stops having funded the turn. The decision candle was part of that fall, not the start of it. A hunt seen afterwards is not a setup: price went on lower for five hours after the 09:15 candle.

The Stop Hunt is the glossary word, and the CPI stop hunt shows a similar day on gold. A week with the Bank in it is in the markups of 27 April 2026.

How much of the morning's fall was the decision?

Less than half of it. From the open of the 09:15 candle, 1.39192, to the low of the 11:15 candle, 1.38393, USD/CAD fell 80 pips in two hours. The decision candle's 31 pips were the largest single step in it, and the other 49 came before the decision and after it, including the press conference candle's 17.

That is the part a headline hides. A line such as "the loonie jumped on the Bank's decision" is true of the candle and leaves out that the pair was already 19 pips down and went on to fall another 30 pips after the decision candle. We do not know why: the decision may have been expected and the pair may have been following oil or US yields. A candle does not carry those.

Does the press conference move USD/CAD more than the decision?

Not on 2 September: the press conference candle ranged 18.3 pips against 33.3 for the decision. We have read only that one candle by candle, and the guides on this search say the statement and the Bank's Monetary Policy Report often matter more than the rate. We cannot test it with four decisions and a candle that holds all of it.

Is a BoC decision bigger than US jobs or CPI on USD/CAD?

No. On the same pair our counts put the BoC decision candle at 2.4 times an ordinary candle (a median 18.9 pips against 7.8). The US CPI candle at 08:30 on USD/CAD ran a median 13.7 pips against 6.8, twice an ordinary one, and the jobs report ran a median 55.2, more than eight times. The average NFP move by pair has the full table.

So for this pair the Bank's minute is on the scale of CPI and well under the jobs report. That does not make it safe: a single decision candle on 2 September was larger than five of the six CPI candles on USD/CAD, whose largest was 43 pips on 14 July.

What do the three seats see on a BoC morning?

The Three Seats read 2 September three ways.

• Retail sees a rate and a loonie. The pair was 19 pips lower before the decision, and the decision candle went on down.
• The market maker, as we read it, sees a morning high that has already been taken. The stops of the people who bought the London run rest under it, and a known minute is when to reach them. That is News-Induced Liquidity. Nobody outside can see those orders.
• The observer sees a sequence. A high at 06:15, a fade, a 31-pip candle at 09:45 and a low five hours later. Each is a fact of the prices and none says who was behind it.

What does this not tell you?

It does not tell you what the Bank decided or how it was expected. It is four decisions on one feed. The other three were not read as closely as 2 September. These days were picked afterwards for study, and our own fixed-rule test of fading hunts on a release lost money after costs.

Course 2 of ForexiaPRO, The Chaos Pattern, teaches this read step by step in lesson 2.3.3, NFP, CPI, FOMC: One Read, Three Calendars.