The FX Trader: If JPY can’t rally strongly now, when can it?

What to know

At the same time, outside of USDJPY, the big dollar has had a hard time falling. According to Bank of America’s FX and rates sentiment survey, the market is the most bearish the US dollar it has been since 2012, which of course was just after the start of a multi-year rally from the 2011 lows in the greenback. That’s not to say we are headed for a repeat. But it certainly is to say that if we look away from USDJPY, the lack of follow on USD weakness given extreme consensus that the currency is headed for trouble should be a red flag for USD bears. Nothing has developed on the charts just yet, but if EURUSD takes out that sub-1.1800 support and GBPUSD takes out the 1.3500 area, the USD bears could be in for a squeeze.

Summing up the above... In recent months, the level of USDJPY has bothered me far less than the soaring EURJPY and GBPJPY levels, with the former reaching all time highs above 185.00 while GBPJPY has reached levels I would have thought impossible a year ago, far above 200.00. Could we be set up for both a stronger US dollar and even stronger Japanese yen regime in coming weeks? Let’s consider the Japanese financial year calendar as well, with the end of the year approaching at the end of March and exporters perhaps soon feeling some new urgency to hedge FX exposure for the coming year.

Chart focus: GBPJPY Ichimoku
As noted above, GBPJPY is one of the JPY pairs that has backed up far more than I would have thought possible previously, with much of the JPY weakness linked to concerns that Japan is facing some kind of slow-burn Truss moment with the stability of the JGB market. Now, JGB’s have found strong support. As for sterling, let’s not forget the UK’s feeble government, troubled economy in the new geopolitical reality and its twin deficits. Those factors escape attention when ex-US global equity markets have rallied in almost a straight line recently, with the UK market one of the star performers, but if risk sentiment faces a stumble together with all of the JPY positive factors we have outlined above, GBPJPY could hit an air pocket. For Ichimoku chartists, the key focus here is on the lagging Chikou line (dark green “lagging span”) slicing though the price bars (a done deal) and then on the price action eventually penetrating and closing below the daily cloud (Not yet accomplished: note how the cloud itself was support back in the summer and fall of last year – still need some price action and/or time to take out the cloud from here). Then the focus will shift to the weekly chart not shown here, where the cloud is still below 200 and will be for many weeks to come.