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[MARKET ANALYSIS] Dollar is marginally softer with a mixed performance against major peers, while JPY continues its outperforms despite no obvious news catalysts

Newsquawk StaffPublished On the live feed at , 20 minutes before this page
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Japan sells JPY 456.2bln 30-yr JGBs; b/c 3.79x (prev. 3.86x), average yield 4.079% (prev. 3.952%)

[MARKET ANALYSIS] Asia-Pac stocks took impetus from the rebound on Wall St as yields eased

[MARKET ANALYSIS] Dollar is marginally softer with a mixed performance against major peers, while JPY continues its outperforms despite no obvious news catalysts

ByteDance gets a USD 30bln loan, which is Asia's second-largest this year

China's Ministry of Natural Resources organises a marine survey of waters east of Taiwan, while China's Coast Guard says it conducts routine law enforcement patrols in the waters east of Taiwan

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DXY: -0.1%

  • Remains lacklustre after recent modest losses and the ultimately mixed performance against G10 counterparts, while there were few fresh drivers as geopolitical headlines remained in focus and dollar-specific newsflow was still pretty light. Nonetheless, Fed's Williams said that rates are in a good place to balance the Fed’s dual mandate and reiterated his support for the previous decision to hold, with future policy dependent on the totality of incoming data, while participants look ahead to comments from Fed's Waller due later ahead of tomorrow's key NFP report.

EUR/USD: Flat

  • Struggles for direction following the prior day's indecision and lingers beneath the 1.1600 level with very little in the way of pertinent catalysts to drive the single currency.

GBP/USD: +0.1%

  • Ekes slight gains in range-bound trade following previous oscillations through the 1.3500 level and with price action not helped by the continued lack of UK data.

USD/JPY: -0.4%

  • Extended on the prior day's decline with USD/JPY testing the 158.00 level to the downside after the yen was supported on Wednesday despite no obvious news catalysts, leading to some speculation of intervention, while there were also more jawboning from US Treasury Secretary Bessent, who said that he knows what the Japanese are planning on doing.

Antipodeans: AUD/USD -0.1% / NZD/USD +0.1%

  • Price action is range-bound with AUD/USD trading sideways, while NZD/USD claws back some of its post-RBNZ losses.
Context

Yen strength of this kind, arriving without a catalyst and followed by pointed commentary from US Treasury, fits the well-worn intervention template: a sharp unexplained move, market speculation of official selling of dollars, then verbal reinforcement from officials on both sides, which historically buys time more reliably than it reverses trends. Past episodes show that unilateral Japanese action has tended to slow rather than turn USD/JPY depreciation, with durability depending on whether rate differentials cooperate; coordinated or US-endorsed pressure, which the Treasury Secretary's remarks gesture toward, has carried more weight when it has occurred. The distinction worth drawing is between actual flows, which would typically show in settlement data and official reserves reporting with a lag, and jawboning alone, which has a shorter half-life. Fed commentary of the Williams variety, rates in a good place and data-dependent, is the standard holding pattern before a major payrolls print and rarely moves the front end on its own; the sensitivity sits with Waller and then NFP, where surprise asymmetry has tended to be the driver. EUR and GBP ranges with no domestic catalysts are characteristic of pre-data consolidation, and antipodean price action remains hostage to the broader dollar tone.

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