The rally for USD/JPY on Friday carried on in the very early pre-Tokyo hours here, to above 149.10. It didn’t sustain above 149 for too long though and as it drifted a little lower we had verbal intervention comments from Japan's Finance Ministry's Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Atsushi Mimura. He is the official who will instruct the BOJ to intervene, when he judges it necessary. His comments were not unusual, along the lines that he will will monitor FX moves including speculative movement, but they were enough to add some selling pressure. As I post USD/JPY has dipped as low as back under 148.25 and then bounced to 148.65 or so.

Just prior to hitting send on this post we've had further comments, this time from Japan finance minister Kato, cutting just a few points off USD/JPY.

News and data flow was otherwise very light. The People’s Bank of China did announce that its reserves of gold remained steady for a fifth consecutive month.

Apart from JPY major FX was sedate, trading only small ranges.

Chinese equities / Hong Kong rallied again. A press conference has been scheduled for Tuesday (when mainland Chinese markets reopen after the week-long holiday) by the state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission of the People's Republic of China (NDRC). It’ll cover the topic of “systematic implementation of a package of incremental policies, the solid promotion of upward trend of the economy and structural improvement, and the sustained improvement in the development trend”, and answer questions from journalists. This is at 10am Beijing time (0200 GMT).

usdyen wrap 07 October 2024 2