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The rebound lasted exactly one hour. Into late morning in London the yen fell a median 15.9 basis points against all seven of its major counterparts, more than erasing the previous hour's recovery, with no Japanese release anywhere near the window and no current reporting marking the turn.

The alternation is now the finding. Since the overnight run carried the yen to 152.87, its strongest since February, the tape has gone give-back, give-back, give-back, recovery, give-back: the sellers ran three hours, the buyers took one back before noon, and the sellers have returned in the same size.

A market that can hold neither the dip nor the bounce is not changing its mind about the yen; it is declining to have one at seven-month highs until deeper liquidity arrives, and New York opens its first full session since Monday's holiday this afternoon. The buyers of the yen's give-back still sort by what they pay.

The Australian dollar, at 4.35% the highest yielder on the board and again the firmest currency of the hour, took 19.1 basis points; sterling took 17.4 and the dollar 17.2; while the board's two encumbered currencies took the least, the Canadian dollar 11.3 and the New Zealand dollar 11.2.

Carry demand is intact underneath the churn; what has stopped is the one-way traffic in the funding leg. The dollar's leg deserves its own sentence: it took 17.2 basis points from the yen through the only American number of the morning, which argued the other way. Small-business optimism printed 98.7 against 99.4 expected and 99.8 previously, the kind of miss that would once have softened the currency, and it washed through without a trace.

With roughly 60% of a quarter-point hike priced for next week's Federal Reserve meeting and inflation due Friday, a second-tier sentiment survey does not move the bid, because the bid is a rates bid. Around those two stories sits the morning's residue. The Canadian dollar is soft a second consecutive hour, down 4.8 basis points on the median, as the crude impulse that made it the European open's leader pauses with WTI a little above 92 dollars; the kiwi's relief bounce lasted the one hour, and it is down 4.9 and soft on six of seven legs again; the franc is fractionally offered, still the market's preferred borrow.

Ahead, Bank of England testimony at 13:15 GMT is the only scheduled stop before New York 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 a Bank of Japan meeting the week after at which a hike is now priced at 97%.

The broken 155.20-155.25 floor is still well overhead and still untested from below. On the week the yen remains up almost 4% and the best major in the G10; on the hour it is a coin being flipped, and it will keep flipping until the biggest book in the market sits down and calls it.