After the Bank of Canada’s (BoC) January rate cut took the world by surprise, traders had already begun pricing in another cut at the bank’s March meeting.

But ever since the central bank abandoned the practice of offering forward guidance in its policy statements, divining its next move has become far more speculative. Indeed, we had believed that recent remarks by a central bank official were telegraphing that another rate cut was imminent.

Soon thereafter, BoC Governor Stephen Poloz delivered remarks of his own where he said the central bank’s recent action “buys us some time to see how the economy actually responds.”

As a result, traders quickly backed away from their bets. And at its meeting earlier this week, the central bank did indeed hold its benchmark overnight rate steady at 0.75%, its lowest level since 2010.

In its statement accompanying this decision, the BoC observed that so far the oil-price shock has had a modest impact on aggregate demand, but a larger effect on income. The bank expects the economy to bear the full brunt of the collapse in oil prices during the first half of the year.

So the customarily cautious central bank is taking a wait-and-see approach for now. And that’s prompted traders to rein in their expectations for further easing. In fact, based on futures data aggregated by Bloomberg, a slight majority of traders expect no further easing for the rest of the year.

In general, it can take anywhere from six to eight quarters for the full effect of monetary policy to flow through to the economy. Obviously, rate-sensitive sectors such as real estate are the first beneficiaries of lower interest rates.

However, there are other factors beyond central bank policy that can have an effect equivalent to a rate cut.

For instance, while Canada is obviously suffering from crude’s collapse, consumers are benefitting from lower prices at the pump.

Although the BoC doesn’t see that as being nearly enough to offset the turmoil in the oil and gas sector, lower fuel prices should stimulate at least some consumer spending, and that will prove helpful to other sectors of the economy.

The other factor, which is far more significant from the BoC’s perspective, is the declining exchange rate. In fact, the BoC says that the lower loonie is already helping boost growth in non-energy exports and investment, suggesting that the economy’s long-awaited rotation away from the energy sector is well underway.

The Canadian dollar currently trades just above USD0.79, down 15.7% from its trailing-year high in early July. The loonie hit a low of USD0.785 in late January.

As for the economy itself, it actually performed far better during the fourth quarter than crude’s swoon might have suggested.

According to Statistics Canada, fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a 2.4% annualized rate, well ahead of the consensus forecast of 2.0%. Of particular note, that’s just a tenth of a point below the threshold that Mr. Poloz had previously identified as the minimum level of growth necessary to remove excess capacity from the economy.

Additionally, the prior quarter was revised higher, to 3.2% from 2.8%.

Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, the first half of the year is expected to be ugly. The consensus forecast among institutional economists is for Canada’s economic growth to decelerate sharply during the first and second quarters, to 1.6% and 1.75%, respectively. The consensus forecast for full-year 2015 is for GDP to grow by 2.1%.

But it’s also important to remember that a stock market doesn’t always follow a choppy economy lower. For now, the S&P/TSX Composite Index trades just 4.5% below the all-time high it hit last September.

In fact, from a U.S. investor standpoint, the falling exchange rate has had a far more deleterious effect on investment performance than any erosion in fundamentals for most non-energy sector securities.

At this point, we should be close to the Canadian dollar’s ultimate bottom–the currency will likely take another hit once the U.S. Federal Reserve finally starts raising rates again.

But for value-conscious U.S. investors with new money to invest and a long-term perspective, a lower exchange rate provides an ample discount to start building positions in solid stocks.