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The loonie’s worst collapse against the U.S. dollar in its history may be in the rearview mirror as a majority of economists now see the currency staying at current levels or higher by the end of the year.

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Investors in Canadian equities have spent the first seven weeks of the year on a jolting roller-coaster ride

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Canada’s dollar has been one of the world’s worst performing currencies, as a crash in oil prices and interest rate cuts by the Bank of Canada caused it to lose 16 per cent of its value against the greenback last year alone — its biggest annual loss ever.

The past three years have seen the loonie fall faster against its counterpart than at any other point in its 45-year history as a free-floating currency, a collapse that brought it from parity with the U.S. dollar to below 69 cents last month.

“With Canadian monetary policy taking a backseat to fiscal stimulus, Fed rate hikes being delayed until later in the year and oil prices appearing to have bottomed out we’ve strengthened our near-term forecast for the Canadian dollar,” said economists at CIBC World Markets in their latest foreign exchange outlook released Tuesday. “Indeed, it’s now likely that the loonie has seen the worst of the depreciation, even if it has one slight dip ahead.”