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Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
After a quiet week of economic data, there’s finally a meaningful report this morning with jobless claims at 8:30. Initial claims came in higher than expected (231K vs 212K) and ticked up to the highest level since last August. Continuing claims at 1.785 million were more in line with forecasts and the recent trend. Earnings have still been coming in fast, but the companies reporting aren’t as large from a market cap perspective. That doesn’t mean they’re any less important if you own them, and we continue to see large one-day moves from several companies reporting. Unfortunately, it feels as if most of those big moves have been to the downside.
Moves in the Japanese yen have made headlines recently as the cross broke above resistance taking the yen to multidecade lows versus the dollar. In terms of lead market stories, the yen has started to move off the front pages as investors look for the next shiny object, but recent moves have still been significant. As shown in the chart below, after April’s massive break, the BoJ intervention caused a brief rally which pulled the cross back to levels that had served as major resistance. In a textbook move, the former resistance for USDJPY served as support, and the last few days have seen a return to the upward trend.
The daily moves in the yen have become more subdued this week, but that follows what had been a period of extreme volatility. In the five days ending 5/2, USDJPY’s average intraday range was 2.5% which was tied with a period in November 2022 for the most volatile five stretch since the Covid crash. Since 1989, there have only been a handful of other periods where the cross had a more volatile five-day stretch.
All this volatility in the yen hasn’t been helpful for Japanese stocks. From its high in early March (right before the USDJPY cross broke above resistance at 152) to late April, the Nikkei 225 corrected by more than 10%, and while it bounced with global markets in the last two weeks, the rally has stalled out right at levels that had been acting as support.
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