Yen resumes its climb, +11.5bp: the three-hour dip is bought as BOJ odds hit 97%
The dip did not survive the London morning. In the hour into late morning the yen rose a median 11.5 basis points against all seven of its major counterparts, with no Japanese release anywhere near the window and no fresh headline inside the hour — after three consecutive losing hours, the buying simply resumed, and the absence of a prompt is the finding.
Profit-taking that runs out of sellers in three hours, at levels far above where the week began, and gets absorbed before New York has even arrived, is a market that wants the currency, not one changing its mind about it. The hour is smaller than any of the overnight run's buying hours — 11.5 basis points against the 12.7, 19.6, 14.1 and 31.9 that carried the yen through Tokyo — and that shape is re-accumulation rather than a fresh impulse: no stops, no news, just the bid returning.
What stands behind it hardened through the morning rather than changed. Money markets now put 97 percent on a quarter-point Bank of Japan hike at next week's meeting, up from 52 percent a month ago on Tokyo Tanshi data, a probability that leaves almost nothing left to argue about, and the same reporting describes the rally as upending the carry trade outright — the yen up almost 5 percent this month against the trade's traditional favourites, the Mexican peso and Turkish lira, early signs of Japanese capital coming home, and open American pressure for a firmer currency.
The yen trades at a seven-month high, past the levels that drew the summer's joint intervention, and this morning's wire coverage runs one way; a pullback has a hard time compounding against that. The hour's other side is the Canadian dollar, which handed the yen the largest leg on the board at 17.2 basis points and was the softest currency everywhere — down on all seven legs at a median 5.8 basis points, with nothing Canadian behind it.
What faded is the impulse that made it the European open's firmest currency: crude has come off its highs, WTI near 92.4 dollars and marginally lower on the day, Brent fluctuating above 96 after last week's 9.3 percent surge, even as the supply story stays live — Washington now striking Iranian tankers under a declared tanker-for-tanker policy and Tehran saying it will announce an exclusion zone near the Strait of Hormuz in the coming days.
With the oil bid pausing, the market trimmed a currency it had bought through the very morning its counter-tariffs on American goods took effect, dollar-Canada holding near 1.3800. The rest of the board is those two stories' residue. The dollar's outright bid lasted exactly one hour: after rising against all seven counterparts into mid-morning it is fractionally soft again on the median, and the damage is the yen leg at 12.75 basis points, with everything else inside a couple of basis points of flat.
The New Zealand dollar bounced quietly, higher on six of seven legs — relief after a session spent as the market's preferred short, not conviction. Ahead, Bank of England testimony at 13:15 GMT is the day's only scheduled stop before New York opens its first full session since the holiday and becomes the first deep liquidity to price a yen in the low 150s, with American inflation on Friday, the Federal Reserve on the 15th and 16th and the Bank of Japan the week after.
The 155.20-155.25 floor the yen broke on Monday is still well overhead and still untested from below. A pullback that lasted three hours and was bought back before New York arrived reads as a trend consolidating, not turning; if New York sells it back, that is the afternoon's news, but London has now voted with the trend.
12 sources
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