Aggregator

Yen Surges As Jittery Traders Expect Imminent Intervention After Japan Reveals New Strategy To Wipe Out Shorts

Zero Rss
1 month 1 week ago
Yen Surges As Jittery Traders Expect Imminent Intervention After Japan Reveals New Strategy To Wipe Out Shorts

After plunging to a fresh 40 year low overnight, the yen strengthened sharply against the dollar amid rising speculation that the currency’s continued weakness may prompt a fresh round of intervention by Japan. The yen then surged again after the June US jobs report showed a much weaker picture than expected.

But let's focus on the first, more unexplained move, which took place just after 2:30am ET, when the Yen rose as much as 1% against the greenback, the most since Japan intervened on April 30. The currency later trimmed the advance, before surging again after the jobs report. Earlier in the week, the yen touched its weakest versus the dollar since 1986.

Traders were already on edge ahead of both the jobs report and the Friday holiday in the US, which creates thin trading conditions that would likely amplify the impact of any yen intervention.

“Liquidity is expected to decline during the afternoon session in New York on July 3, when US markets will effectively be closed for the Independence Day holiday,” said Masayuki Nakajima, senior currency strategist at Mizuho Bank in London. “If major US economic releases, such as the employment report, were to come in weaker than expected and trigger broad dollar selling, intervention could become tactically more effective.”

Talking to Bloomberg, Neil Jones, a managing director of FX trading at TJM FX in London, recommended buying bearish dollar-yen options. The strategy assumes “a no-warning scenario this time,” he said. While it’s difficult to time any potential intervention, he’s increasingly convinced that it will ultimately happen.

Meanwhile, South Korean Second Vice Finance Minister Huh Chang said Thursday that the government is closely exchanging information with the US and Japan regarding the forex market.

Reuters earlier reported that Japanese officials may abandon telegraphing their intentions to the market, which would be unlike the case with the intervention that happened on April 30 following ample warnings. Such a new tactic could be effective in wiping out ‌speculative bets against the currency, according to the report.

The shift reflects a more aggressive approach by the MOF, which is using silence as a policy tool to keep traders guessing. That raises the risk of a surprise intervention driven by an accumulation of speculative short-yen bets rather than by the currency crossing a publicly understood threshold, the sources said.

The MOF's approach and the Bank of Japan's continued hawkish rhetoric ​signal a coordinated effort to keep yen bears at bay, two other sources said.

Of course, leaking this trial balloon effectively eliminates the surprise aspect, although it does force speculative shorts to cover ahead of what may come next. 

In an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Japan’s top currency official, Atsushi Mimura, refrained from spelling out the finance ministry’s standard currency stance, including its readiness at any time to take “bold action”, meaning intervention.

The challenge for traders is that Mimura’s silence may on the one hand be an attempt to retain a degree of surprise, but it could also suggests that authorities may be willing to let the currency fall further before acting. Many traders had expected that the BOJ would have intervened as soon as the USDJPY hit 161. Instead the pair rose just shy of 163 before there was a notable move lower. 

Intervention “has always carried an element of surprise,” said Rodrigo Catril, a strategist at National Australia Bank. “The MOF is seemingly trying a new tactic of reverse psychology, but in practice there isn’t a great deal of difference between what they have been doing in the past.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that options traders are ramping up hedges against sharp yen swings, with a gauge of one-month dollar-yen butterfly spreads at an elevated level, suggesting that concerns about possible market intervention are increasing.

Japan spent a record ¥11.73 trillion ($72.2 billion) in the month through May 27 to prop up the yen, according to Finance Ministry figures. The ministry first stepped into the market on April 30, according to people familiar with the matter, when Japan’s currency was approaching the 161 threshold. The yen initially strengthened, moving to around 155 per dollar, but then steadily and fully retraced those gains even after the Bank of Japan raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in 31 years on June 16.

In a note from Goldman FX traders this morning, the bank mused whether the sharp move lower was a "rate check/intervention." It laid out four points from the GS FICC & Equities desk:

  • Volume was small. The spike in EBS volumes was "only" ~$1.5bn over the window — trivial versus prior confirmed interventions.
  • Looks like a stop-run, not official flow. It coincided with a move back through 162, and there appeared to be a LHS TWAP flow already in the market beforehand — the desk's read is this may have simply triggered stop-losses into an air pocket.
  • Range too shallow. Today's spot range was well under previous intervention days, and spot rebounded rather than seeing repeated waves of selling volume pushing lower — atypical of real intervention.
  • The one caveat. There are reports that MoF is changing its intervention practice — less telegraphed, more of a "targeted campaign to squeeze speculators."

Separately, the bank also echoed the Reuters report noting that "Japanese officials warning us we won't get a warning by delivering a warning." The desk says this actually increases their comfort running a ratio USDJPY short vs. dollar length elsewhere into today's NFP, especially after the sizeable XXXJPY rally into month-end (they were correct).

Goldman's bottom line: they'd normally chalk this up to a panicky market with spot near the highs (based mainly on the light EBS volume), but point 4 raises the risk that we're in a different intervention regime and can't fully dismiss it.

“The prospect of surprise intervention should make speculators think twice before adding to bearish yen positions,” said Carol Kong, a strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. “However, US yields remain the dominant driver of USD/JPY. If tonight’s US payrolls report surprises to the upside again, the pair could still push to fresh highs despite the risk of intervention.”

The payrolls report surprised to the downside instead, and USDJPY was last trading just under 161, a two-week low. 

 

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/02/2026 - 10:30
Tyler Durden

Core Durable Goods Orders Soar Most In 4 Years

Zero Rss
1 month 1 week ago
Core Durable Goods Orders Soar Most In 4 Years

US durable goods orders plummeted 4.5% MoM in May (as expected), dragging orders down 4.3% YoY - the worst annual decline since Nov 2024...

Source: Bloomberg

However, ex-transports, orders rose 1.4% MoM - up for the 14th straight month - with orders soaring over 10% YoY, the strongest annual surge since May 2022...

Adding more confusion, US factory orders fell 1.3% MoM in May (better than the 2.0% MoM decline expected) but dramatically divergent from the 4.8% MoM surge in April (revised down from +5.3%).

...but factory orders ex-transports rose 1.9% MoM - the seventh straight month of gains - with core orders up 9.5% YoY, the best since Sept 2022...

So, take your pick.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/02/2026 - 10:24
Tyler Durden

US Adds Only 57K Jobs, Missing Estimates, As Unemployment Rate Slides On Plunge In Workers

Zero Rss
1 month 1 week ago
US Adds Only 57K Jobs, Missing Estimates, As Unemployment Rate Slides On Plunge In Workers

In our jobs preview post we quoted Goldman Delta One head, Rich Privorotsky, who said that "equities marginally want something weaker than consensus: with no forward guidance, hot NFP means hikes in play, which is unfriendly for pockets of equity risk." Well, they got it because moments ago the BLS reported that in June the US added just 57K workers, half the 113K expected, and the worst monthly print since the big February drop. 

Except for an outlier 25K forecast from Citi, the jobs print was below all forecasts, a 2 sigma miss to estimates.

And yes, negative revisions are back:

  • April jobs revised down by 31,000, from +179,000 to +148,000
  • May jobs revised down by 43,000, from +172,000 to +129,000. 

With these revisions, employment in April and May combined is 74,000 lower than previously reported as Trump once again goes back to using the Biden playbook. 

Remarkably, while the number of payrolls rose by 57K, the number of actually employed people plunged by 507K to 162.264MM, which means the staggering gap between workers and payrolls is once again blowing out.

Just as ominously, the labor force participation rate plunged from 61.8% to 61.5%...

... driven by a massive 720K drop in the civilian labor force, which dropped to 169.358K from over 170 million...

... and which pushed the unemployment rate lower to 4.2% from 4.3%. 

By race, the unemployment rate saw a modest increase in Latino unemployment rate. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates showed little or no change in June for adult men (3.9%), adult women (3.7%), teenagers (14.6%), and people who are White (3.6%), Black (6.6%), Asian (3.9%), or Hispanic (5.2%), although those have increase for 3 months in a row now.

Looking at wages, there were no surprises here, with a 0.3% increase in average hourly earnings, as expected, resulting in a 3.5% increase in annual hourly earnings, also as expected.

Broken down:

  • Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 13 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $37.64. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.5 percent. In June, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 7 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $32.38. 
  • The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.3 hours in June. In manufacturing, the average workweek edged down to 40.3 hours, and overtime edged up to 3.2 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls declined by 0.1 hour to 33.7 hours. 

Some more details from the jobs report:

  • The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) changed little at 1.9 million in June but is up by 286,000 over the year. The long-term unemployed accounted for 27.3 percent of all unemployed people in June. 
  • The labor force participation rate decreased by 0.3 percentage point to 61.5 percent in June, and the employment-population ratio edged down by 0.2 percentage point to 59.0 percent. Both measures changed little over the year after accounting for annual population control adjustments. 
  • The number of people employed part time for economic reasons changed little at 4.7 million in June. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. 
  • In June, the number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job changed little at 6.0 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. 
  • Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of people marginally attached to the labor force changed little at 1.8 million in June. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, was essentially unchanged in June at 477,000. 

Taking a look at the composition of jobs,  

  • Employment in professional and business services continued to trend up in June (+36,000). The industry has added 172,000 jobs since a recent low in October 2025.
  • Social assistance added 25,000 jobs in June, primarily in individual and family services (+17,000). Over the prior 12 months, social assistance had added an average of 16,000 jobs per month.
  • In June, employment in health care continued its upward trend (+22,000) but at a slower pace than the average monthly gain over the prior 12 months (+38,000). In June, hospitals added 9,000 jobs.
  • Leisure and hospitality employment declined by 61,000 in June, reflecting weaker than usual seasonal hiring. Thus far in 2026, employment in the industry has shown little net change.
  • Employment showed little or no change over the month in other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; construction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; retail trade; transportation and warehousing; information; financial activities; other services; and government.

And visually:

Last but not least, the most damning aspect of the jobs report was once again below the surface, where we find that that while part-time jobs dropped by 53K in June to 28.626MM, the number of full-time workers collapsed by a whopping 514K, confirming once again that the composition of the US labor market remains terrible.

This means that the number of full-time jobs is now at levels last seen in 2024...

... and down more than 2.2 million from their Jan 2025 highs.

The market reaction: in response to the weaker than expected number, odds of a rate hike dropped notably...

... although with no forward guidance from the Fed, it will be largely unclear how Warsh will interpret the data.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/02/2026 - 10:15
Tyler Durden

zero rss