I posted here as the first wave of intervention was hitting on why this is a cheap time of day to do it:
If you are unaware of how the forex market works today has been an excellent lesson. Its touted as as a 24 hour market, and it is, but some times of day are characterised by stupidly-thin liquidity.
Like, right now its:
8:48am in New Zealand, FX desks are fully open
6:48am in Sydney - too early to be fully open for interbank trade
5:48am in Tokyo
4:48am in Singapore and Hong Kong
4:48pm in New York - finished for the day bar a few stagglers
9:48pm in London
Yes, the algos are still active, but without interbank liquidity they are beating each other up.
This is a very cheap time of day for intervention to get 'bang for the buck' - it doesn't take too much to move FX compared to the thicker liquidity time of day.
USD/JPY update, wild swings:
Up a big figure from its low - that's only a few spreads in this market.
