2026-01-14 09:06:00
It’s certainly an interesting one. It was among a barrage of comments in which you’d typically see Tokyo officials attempt to jawbone or verbally intervene with the Japanese yen currency. Katayama said that:
- Will take appropriate action against excessive forex moves without excluding any option
- Had deep talks on the matter with US Treasury secretary Bessent
- Sudden moves seen on 9 January do not reflect fundamentals
Let’s take a look at the USD/JPY price action for that particular date:
The pair did post just over 100 pips of gains last Friday but it’s not like that hasn’t happened in recent times. In the past three months dating back to October, the pair has posted over 100 pips in daily gains for a total of six times.
However, perhaps it was a case that the November and December highs were held back just under the 158.00 level previously. And last Friday, we saw price action breach that in leading to this week’s push to a fresh one-year high at the start of the week. That before a further climb to test waters above 159.00 today – the highest since July 2024.
In some sense, there’s a certain inevitability now that we’re to see the pair at least probe the 160.00 mark.
But again, it’s funny that he singles out the price action on 9 January as being not in line with the “fundamentals”. If you want to argue it that way, it’s pretty much the whole rally since October itself. That as the basics of the rally stems from the Takaichi trade and nothing to do with rate differentials whatsoever.
That unless Katayama wants to admit that they do have a pain threshold that is soon to be reached. And the first trigger was the break of the 158.00 threshold on Friday last week. Intervention knocking on the door next?
This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.
