The Japanese Yen (JPY) keeps doing the one thing Tokyo least wants: drifting weaker into the zone where intervention becomes a live question.
USD/JPY firmed back above 159.50 and pressed toward the 160.00 handle on Monday, the same threshold that triggered official Yen-buying at the end of April
The story has not changed in months. A wide gap between US and Japanese interest rates, a Federal Reserve (Fed) in no hurry to cut, and a Crude Oil bid tied to the Middle East conflict that stings Japan harder than most given its near-total reliance on imported energy. The Yen is weak because the arithmetic says it should be, and official jawboning has not changed the arithmetic.
Intervention only buys time When the Bank of Japan (BoJ) and the finance ministry sold dollars near 160.00 in late April, USD/JPY dropped sharply, briefly trading down near 152.00 before grinding all the way back to the 159.00 area within weeks. The lesson the market took away was not subtle: intervention slows the move, it does not reverse it. The only durable fix for a chronically weak Yen is a narrower rate gap, which means either the Fed starts cutting or the BoJ keeps hiking.