Elsewhere in markets, the dollar held near a 19-month high and was on track for its largest weekly gain in over a month, as investors weighed the prospect of an outsized 50-basis-point rate hike by the Federal Reserve next month.
There's an active debate about more aggressive action on the part of the Fed after this week's stronger-than-expected inflation data, which left policymakers opening the door to a quicker pace of tightening.
The repricing of rate expectations sent the 2-year US Treasury yield to a one-month high in Asia on Friday, while the benchmark 10-year yield scaled a three-week peak.
The renewed climb in the dollar meanwhile weighed on the yen, leaving traders on alert for any intervention from Japanese authorities to shore up the currency.
Japan's government will respond appropriately to currency volatility, the country's Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said on Friday, renewing her warning as the yen briefly crossed the key 160 per dollar threshold.
The US Treasury bought Japanese yen in the July-to-September quarter, but the Fed did not intervene on its own in foreign exchange markets in the same period, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Thursday.
The New York Fed said it bought 79.4 billion yen ($497.37 million) in the spot market on July 31, selling euros from the Exchange Stabilization Fund.
No comments:
Post a Comment