USD/JPY finally made a break for it above 150.00 in the US afternoon on Wednesday and that move extended to approach 150.50 during the Asia timezone. We had some ineffective jawboning out of Japan, from Finance Minister Suzuki and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary which failed to halt the rise. Perhaps a counterfactual might be it would have gone higher without them but we’ll never know for sure.

As I update USD/JPY is sitting around 150.45. There was no fresh news apart from what was posted.

On the central bank front, it was Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Bullock speaking again today. She dialled back her recent hawkish rhetoric, with much hand-wringing and hair-splitting about whether the rise in Australian inflation we had in the Q3 data on Wednesday was ‘material’ and would thus bring about another interest rate rise. Private sector analysts were quick to say the broad jump in CPI would prompt an RBA November rate hike, but Bullock didn’t jump on board today.

The Australian dollar fell away, and the initial move did seem correlated with her more pensive (and misplaced IMHO) comments but at the end of the day, at least as of writing this wrap, AUD was just one of the casualties of another strong day for the US dollar. EUR, NZD, GBP, CAD, CHF – all lower.

Oil and gold were fairly flat.

The crypto sector is putting up a fight, BTC/USD is trading just under $38K as I post:

btcusd wrap chart 26 October 2023