{"id":529831,"date":"2026-07-02T18:36:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T18:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/529831\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T18:36:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T18:36:23","slug":"dollar-slides-after-soft-jobs-report-yen-surges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/529831\/","title":{"rendered":"Dollar slides after soft jobs report, yen surges"},"content":{"rendered":"

The yen steadied Tuesday after suspected intervention by Tokyo last week, while the U.S. dollar firmed on safe-haven demand amid the Middle East war.<\/p>\n

Matias Baglietto | Nurphoto | Getty Images<\/p>\n

The\u00a0dollar\u00a0fell sharply on Thursday after the closely watched June employment \u200breport showed\u00a0U.S. employers added far fewer \u200bjobs than expected, while the Japanese \u200byen surged as traders braced for possible intervention by Japanese authorities.<\/p>\n

Employers added 57,000 jobs, below economists’ expectations for 110,000 job gains. Unemployment slipped to 4.2%, from 4.3%.<\/p>\n

Markets quickly repriced their expectations for\u00a0Federal Reserve\u00a0policy. Fed funds futures traders now see \u2060a \u200c53% chance of a rate hike by September, down from 67% \u2060before the report.<\/p>\n

“It is weaker than expected, but the bulk of the numbers were in leisure and hospitality. That’s probably driven more by seasonal factors than by anything else, so it’s not very nefarious,”\u00a0Sarah Ying, head of FX strategy at\u00a0CIBC Capital Markets, said.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0dollar\u00a0index, which \u200cmeasures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, was last down 0.6% at 100.81, with the euro up 0.6% at\u00a0$1.1438.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0dollar\u00a0had been buoyed in recent months \u200bby rising expectations that the Fed would raise rates as it continues to battle inflation running well above its 2% annual target. Strong capital inflows tied to the artificial intelligence boom have also supported the currency.<\/p>\n

“Unless we continue to see disappointments in the labor market data, it still feels like the AI narrative \u2060is driving a lot of the flow,” Ying said.<\/p>\n

Yen surges<\/p>\n

The Japanese yen rallied sharply against the\u00a0dollar\u00a0on Thursday as traders weighed a \u200cshift in intervention strategy by\u00a0Japan’s\u00a0Ministry of Finance and speculated whether\u00a0Tokyo\u00a0\u200chad already moved.<\/p>\n

told Reuters Japanese officials were abandoning their habit of telegraphing intervention risks, instead signalling a more targeted campaign to squeeze speculators and raise the cost of betting against the yen.<\/p>\n

Officials were also avoiding any suggestion of a specific “line in the sand” \u2060exchange-rate level that would trigger action, in a more aggressive approach aimed at keeping traders guessing.<\/p>\n

“If they’re not going \u2060to give guidance, the MOF can come in at any time. So that is a \u2060scarier thought, I would think, relative to the current status quo,” Ying said.<\/p>\n

“It’s just a more aggressive way for the MOF to communicate and to respond to yen weakness.”<\/p>\n

The Japanese yen \u200bstrengthened 1% against the greenback to 160.96 per\u00a0dollar\u00a0and \u200creached 160.62, the strongest since\u00a0June 18.<\/p>\n

What triggered the move remained unclear, and\u00a0Japan’s\u00a0Ministry of Finance declined to comment. Traders and strategists offered differing explanations, with some speculating that authorities had checked rates in the market \u2014 a move that typically signals a willingness to intervene and can rattle currency markets on its own.<\/p>\n

“We will have to wait for data to ascertain if this was intervention, but \u200bthe timing of the move does suggest that \u200cit was,”\u00a0Abbas Keshvani,\u00a0Asia\u00a0macro strategist at\u00a0RBC Capital Markets\u00a0in\u00a0Singapore, said.<\/p>\n

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The yen steadied Tuesday after suspected intervention by Tokyo last week, while the U.S. dollar firmed on safe-haven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[171315,964,72,122,3389,113,134844,61,60,123,115],"class_list":["post-529831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-lco26u","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-economic-events","tag-economy","tag-forex-markets","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-markets","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}