USDJPY enters the intervention “danger zone”

USDJPY briefly pushed above 145 in today’s session before a sharp pullback, with traders wary of recent jawboning from Japanese officials regarding the “one sided” trade in the Yen may be setting the Japanese MoF up for another round on FX intervention that we saw late in 2022.

Some sharp moves in the Yen in the last day have had traders speculating the MoF may have already intervened on a small scale but there was no official confirmation of intervention, MoF officials said they have no comment on the matter, but “they are mindful of the one-sided moves”. Looking at a close up of last years price action in the USDJPY may give traders a clue as to what to expect, with minor interventions seeing USDJPY spike lower, only to rise again until a major intervention or surprise policy change sustains a move lower in the cross rate. This is a fairly predictable scenario from my experience with JPY interventions over the years. Any USDJPY traders would be wise to be familiar with the price action from these previous intervention efforts.