Lee Hardman, Senior Currency Analyst, and Henry Cook, Senior Economist, discuss why the yen has quickly given intervention driven gains over the past week. In addition, they discuss the resilience of the UK economy to the negative energy price shock and impact on BoE policy.

What has been driving USD/JPY after last month’s intervention driven gains?

The MUFG Global Markets Podcast

Welcome to the MUFG Global Markets FX Week Ahead Podcast with Derek Halpenny, Senior Currency Analyst. It's Friday 14th August 2026 and joining Lee to pose some questions on the financial market themes for the week ahead is Henry Cook, Senior Economist. This material is only intended for professional investors in jurisdictions in which its use is permitted under applicable laws, rules and regulations.

It has been produced for information purposes only and should not be construed as investment research or advice. MUFG EMEA disclaimers and disclosures can be located on our website. Hi Henry. Hi Lee. How are you doing? Yeah, not bad, not bad. How are you? Yeah, all good thanks. It's good to have you here again on the podcast today.

Definitely over the last week, we have seen financial market conditions calm down after the joint intervention that we saw from the US and Japan at the end of July. Obviously, that was intended to help support the yen and the US Treasury markets. But since then, we've seen the yen quickly giving back around half of its intervention driven gains.

If we look at the latest positioning data from the CFTC at the end of last week, we can see clearly that there was a sharp unwind of short yen speculative positions by leverage funds after that joint intervention. So from that perspective, it was kind of relatively successful. It did definitely trigger an unwind and discouraged kind of short yen positions that have been built up in the market.

But as we've seen, I still think kind of broader financial conditions remain supportive for yen funded carry trade. So we may have seen leverage funds kind of gradually kind of cautiously rebuilding those short yen positions over the past week.

What has been driving USD/JPY after last month’s intervention driven gains?

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

What has been driving USD/JPY after last month’s intervention driven gains?

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.