Risk Aversion Halts its Gains

After rebounding from its lows at the beginning of the year, when it hit a double bottom of around 128, the USD/JPY jumped 1,000 pips and traded around 138 in March.

• Investors’ fears about the future of Chinese economic growth coincided with expectations of a recession in the US economy, which increased the appetite of investors and markets to buy safe-havens.
• This allowed the Japanese yen to achieve gains against the rest of the other major currencies ahead of an important date for the Japanese yen, which is the result of the first meeting of the central bank governor.
• Gains of the recent bullish rebound for the USD/JPY currency pair stopped at the resistance level of 135.13, its highest in a month and a half.

The clarity of the head and shoulders formation of the USD/JPY pair on the four-hour chart helped the selling operations to take recent profits, to launch towards the support level of 133.36, before settling around the level of 133.80 at the time of writing.

April will end this week and with it the fourth trading month of the year. With no significant economic data scheduled, the focus of the week will be on the JPY crosses for two reasons.

First, the Japanese yen was bought aggressively in March during the US banking crisis. Not all pairs have recovered from their bottoms, but some have. Thus, there is room for some Japanese yen pairs to continue rising until the end of the month. For example, the EUR/JPY exchange rate has recovered all the losses incurred during the banking crisis and is now trading at new highs. But the USD/JPY pair is still below its 2023 highs, which means we may see some pressure in the next few days.

Secondly, the trading week started with news from Japan that the new Governor of the Bank of Japan is considering reviewing monetary policy. On Friday, the Bank of Japan will release its monetary policy decision, and the yen crosses will be in focus. Kazuo Ueda, the new governor, said he wanted to see “very strong” inflation before ending yield curve control. Therefore, the central bank is unlikely to announce anything new this week and hence there is a bearish bias from a fundamental point of view for the Japanese yen.

The USD/JPY exchange rate has been consolidating for over a week now. After rebounding from its lows at the beginning of the year, when it hit a double bottom of around 128, the USD/JPY jumped 1,000 pips and traded around 138 in March. But then, the American banking crisis began. Being a safe haven currency, the yen was bought aggressively.

However, it has somehow carved a bottom at 130 as the crisis subsides. The recent consolidation is like a contracting triangle that should end with an upward breakout. And given what lies ahead (i.e. the BoJ meeting on Friday and the Fed’s decision next week), we will see a breakout sooner rather than later. The bias will remain bullish as long as the pair is trading above 132.

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