The U.S. dollar touched its highest level against the Japanese yen in a year on Wednesday as rising Treasury yields helped push the greenback higher against most of its rivals.
As yields rose on Monday, the dollar
USDJPY,
traded as high as 150.32 yen, according to Tullett Prebon data. That’s the highest level intraday for the currency pair since Oct. 21, 2022, when the dollar traded as high as 151.95 yen, its strongest level since the early 1990s.
150 is widely seen as a critical threshold for the yen, since Japanese authorities have hinted that they could intervene to support the yen if it continued to depreciate.
See: Japanese yen sees wild swing amid intervention fears after falling to nearly 1-year low versus dollar
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told parliament last week that the yen’s rapid depreciation was a problem, and that his government would work with the Bank of Japan to take action if necessary.
Higher Treasury yields have helped drive the U.S. dollar higher. Meanwhile, the BoJ has maintained a tight grip on Japanese government bond yields, even after adjusting its policy to allow bonds to trade more freely late last year.
Some on Wall Street have speculated that the BoJ could abandon, or significantly modify, its policy of controlling bond yields, as well as its policy of keeping short-term yields in negative territory, perhaps as soon as next week’s policy meeting.
The BoJ has largely bucked the trend of central banks raising interest rates over the last two years, which has helped fuel the yen’s weakness, since the Japanese currency offers comparatively paltry returns relative to the U.S. dollar and Treasury yields. Treasury yields traded near their highest levels in 16 years on Wednesday.
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