If you’ve been glued to yours screens waiting for that USD/JPY push towards 150.00 again, it must be a real snoozer over the last 1.5 hours. Here’s the minute price action in the pair and it shows a roughly 8-10 pips range:

At this stage, it’s all about anticipating the things that will or might come next in markets. We know what those are but we don’t know what the bigger picture reaction that may be. Let’s take stock of the the key focus points right now.

1. The bond market. 10-year Treasury yields are down slightly today to 4.95% but it’s all about the trigger at 5% and if that will have broader market spillovers to follow. Or perhaps we could hit stops and see a retracement of sorts first, before revisiting that in the near future.
2. The Israel-Hamas conflict. And now we can sort of add in tensions at the Israel-Lebanon border as Hezbollah starts to interfere as well. There’s so much uncertainty breeding in the region and that is keeping commodities entertained. Gold is up alongside oil but broader markets are not too heavily impacted yet. However, there’s still the potential flight to safety before the weekend to consider.
3. USD/JPY and Tokyo intervention. According to some charts, we clipped the 150.00 mark earlier and that saw a brief drop to 149.73 (or perhaps lower on some charts) before getting bought back up. That to me reads as stops being triggered rather than any Japanese meddling but if we do catch a bid back above the figure level, could Tokyo step in again? There’s only one way to find out.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.