Yen eases as Nikkei jumps, central bank meetings loom

The yen ticked lower on Monday after a week when it surged to its strongest in 12 weeks against the dollar, as a recovery in equity markets sapped demand for the currency as a safe haven.

A flush out of long-held short yen positions also appeared to have run its course by the end of last week, with traders now looking to central bank decisions in Japan and the U.S. on Wednesday for further direction.

Sterling was steady near a 2-1/2-week low to the euro ahead of the Bank of England’s policy announcement on Thursday.

The dollar gained 0.29% to 154.24 yen early in the Asian day, after dipping as low as 151.945 on Thursday for the first time since May 3.

Last week, the dollar sank 2.36% against the yen for its worst weekly performance since late April.

On Monday, Japan’s Nikkei stock average jumped more than 2%.

Speculation has grown that the Bank of Japan will raise interest rates on Wednesday at the same time as significantly reducing its monthly bond purchases. It had promised to outline its quantitative tightening (QT) plans at this meeting during its previous gathering last month.

“If the BOJ holds off on hiking rates, it will need to announce a more aggressive QT programme than expected to avoid a ‘sell-the-rumour, buy-the-fact’ … reaction in USD/JPY,” said Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is widely expected to leave rates unchanged this week, but cut them by a quarter point at the following meeting in September.

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Demand for the yen could easily reignite should stocks turn lower as well, with the U.S. earnings calendar this week populated with heavyweights including Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Meta (NASDAQ:META) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).

The euro gained 0.25% to 167.37 yen, and was flat at $1.0859.

It eased 0.07% to 84.32 British pence, not straying far from the high of 84.48 pence from Friday, the strongest since July 10.

Sterling added 0.12% to $1.2882.

Markets see the odds of a first rate cut on Thursday as a coin toss.

Elsewhere, the Australian dollar gained 0.31% to $0.6568, recovering from Friday’s low of $0.65105, a level not seen since the start of May.

Leading cryptocurrency bitcoin advanced 2% to $68,793, receiving some support from positive comments from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who told a bitcoin conference on Saturday that the U.S. must dominate the sector or China would.