- The Japanese yen has settled back to around 159.93 against the US dollar after threatening to breach a key psychological level of 160.
- This had previously prompted Japanese authorities to intervene in forex markets.
- Commenting on the exchange rate's performance, Masato Kanda, a top currency diplomat, said that Japan is ready to act against volatile yen moves "at any time," stressing that currency movements should be stable and reflect fundamentals.
According to currency trading companies’ platforms, the Japanese yen’s decline accelerated recently after the Bank of Japan’s summary of its views from its June meeting showed that members were divided on how to proceed with the next interest rate hike. One member called for early action due to the upside risks to inflation, while others urged caution and needed further confirmation from upcoming data.
These developments came as the Bank of Japan again refrained from reducing its massive bond purchases in its policy decision last week, saying it would issue a plan to scale back the bond-buying program at its next policy meeting in July.
On the stock exchanges front, Japanese stocks hit two-week highs.
According to trading, the Nikkei 225 index of Japanese stocks rose 0.95% to close at 39,173 while the broader Topix index rose 1.72% to 2,787, extending gains from the previous session and hitting a two-week high as a weaker yen continued to support stocks by boosting earnings expectations. Also, export-dependent Japanese industries Data showed that Japan’s service producer price index rose 2.5% in May, slowing from a 2.7% increase in April.
In general, investors are now looking ahead to more domestic economic reports this week including retail sales, industrial production and unemployment data for May, as well as Tokyo’s inflation figures for June. Index heavyweights Toyota Motor (4.6%), Mitsubishi UFJ (3.9%), Sumitomo Mitsui (3.2%), Hitachi (4.6%) and Sony (1.9%) saw strong gains. Meanwhile, technology stocks came under pressure as major US semiconductor companies continued to sell, with heavy losses from Disco Corp (-5.5%), Tokyo Electron (-1.7%) and SoftBank Group (-0.3%).
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USD/JPY Technical Analysis and Expectations Today
My technical view on the USD/JPY currency pair remains bullish until Japan intervenes in the forex markets to prevent further exchange rate collapse that is hurting the Japanese economy. Technically, USD/JPY’s recent gains were enough to push technical indicators towards strong overbought levels. Furthermore, we are still selling from above the psychological resistance of 160.00 but without risk. Ultimately, by considering that the US dollar price is awaiting the US inflation reading and the preferred one by the US Federal Reserve at the end of the week.
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