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The sellers no longer need a prompt, and they have stopped alternating. Into the New York handover the yen fell a median 12.7 basis points against all seven of its major counterparts, with no Japanese release anywhere near the window and no fresh reporting attaching a cause to the hour itself — five of the last six hours have now gone against the yen, and the sharp recovery before noon stands as the session's only buying hour since the currency printed 152.87 to the dollar, its strongest since February.

An hour ago this tape read as a coin being flipped, a market declining to have an opinion at seven-month highs; two consecutive selling hours, in easing size — 15.9 basis points then 12.7 — read differently. This is an orderly distribution: the book that bought the yen through four straight overnight hours is being walked lower before the deepest liquidity of the week arrives, and the persistence of the flow through the pre-New York hours, when American accounts begin to arrive, says the squaring is happening ahead of them rather than against them.

Nothing in the argument has moved. A Bank of Japan hike at next week's meeting remains all but fully priced — money markets put 97 percent on it — the wage and growth data behind the rally stand, and the yen is still up almost 4 percent this month, the best performer among the majors; what is being reduced is the position, not the case, ahead of three decisions in ten days: American inflation on Friday, a Federal Reserve meeting on the 15th and 16th at which roughly 60 percent of a quarter-point hike is priced, and the Bank of Japan the week after.

The American rates market leaned the same way in thin trade this hour, the two-year note future slipping 1.1 basis points of price and the ten-year 1.5 — front-end yields marked a touch higher — while the ultra bond added 8.5, the shape of a market adding hike risk at the front and buying the long end into Friday's print.

The hour's largest yen leg carries its own story: sterling took 19.4 basis points, and sterling was the firmest currency on the board, higher on all seven of its legs into Treasury Select Committee testimony at 13:15 GMT from Governor Bailey, Deputy Governor Ramsden and policymakers Greene and Taylor.

The pound had traded slightly lower on the day around 1.3529 to the dollar beforehand, with a hold at 3.75 percent expected this month and one hike priced by year-end, so the bid reads as positioning for the risk that testimony leans hawkish rather than a response to anything yet said.

Strip sterling out and the yen's remaining legs run 8.6 to 16.8 basis points — the same uniform trim as every give-back hour today. Elsewhere the Canadian dollar was second-firmest, recovering the morning's trim ahead of Ottawa's federal budget at 20:03 GMT, and the rest of the board sat within a few basis points of flat.

The broken 155.20-155.25 floor is still overhead and still untested from below, and on the week the yen remains the G10's best currency. The question every hour today has deferred — what the biggest book in the market will pay for a yen near seven-month highs — stops being deferrable this afternoon.