USD/JPY rises back above 140.00 following US data

USD/JPY tallied a fifth consecutive day of gains rising to a high near 140.40.
Jobless Claims decelerated in the second week of July and fueled a rise in US yields.
Philly’s Fed Survey and Existing Home Sales showed poor results.

Patricio Martín FXStreet

The USD strengthened on Thursday and trades with gains against most of its rivals, including the EUR, GBP, CHF and JPY. Lower Initial Jobless Claims fueled a rise in US bond yields and allowed the USD – measured by the DXY index – to rise to its highest level in seven days at 100.80.

Investors assess mid-tier US data. All eyes on Japan’s Inflation data

The US reported mid-tier data. On the negative side, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Manufacturing survey showed worrying results as it index declined more than expected, coming in at -13.5 vs the consensus of -10. In addition, following Wednesday’s soft Housing data, Existing Home Sales from the US from June also showed weakness. The figure showed a contraction of 3.3% MoM in June with a 4.16M decrease.

That being said, investors are weighing more the lower-than-expected Initial Jobless Claims figures for the second week of July. The number of people filing for unemployment benefits came in at 228,000 vs the 242,000 expected and also below the previous figure of 237,000.

US Treasury yields advanced across the board. The 2-year yield displays nearly 2% gains and stands at 4.88%, while the 5 and 10-year yields rose to 4.10% and 3.84% showing more than 2% increase. Ahead of next week's Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting, markets have discounted mainly a 25 basis point increase while the odds of another hike past July continue to be low according to World Interest Rate Probabilities (WIRP)

On the Japanese side, investors will eye Japanese inflation figures from June. The headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) is expected to have accelerated to 3.5% YoY in June, while the Core measure to decelerate slightly to 4.2%.

USD/JPY Levels to watch

The daily chart indicates that the bulls are gaining ground, marching towards positive territory. As for now, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) points noth but remains in negative territory while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) prints lower red bars, indicating at a fading selling momentum.

Resistance levels: 140.70, 141.00, 141.95 (20-day Simple Moving Average)
Support levels: 140.00, 139.60,139.00.

USD/JPY Daily chart

USD/JPY

Overview
Today last price	140.39
Today Daily Change	0.78
Today Daily Change %	0.56
Today daily open	139.61

Trends
Daily SMA20	142.11
Daily SMA50	140.4
Daily SMA100	137.1
Daily SMA200	136.98

Levels
Previous Daily High	140
Previous Daily Low	138.77
Previous Weekly High	143
Previous Weekly Low	137.24
Previous Monthly High	145.07
Previous Monthly Low	138.43
Daily Fibonacci 38.2%	139.53
Daily Fibonacci 61.8%	139.24
Daily Pivot Point S1	138.92
Daily Pivot Point S2	138.23
Daily Pivot Point S3	137.69
Daily Pivot Point R1	140.15
Daily Pivot Point R2	140.69
Daily Pivot Point R3	141.38

Author

Patricio Martín

FXStreet

Patricio is an economist from Argentina passionate about global finance and understanding the daily movements of the markets.

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