Yen gives back nearly half of intervention rally, nears 160 per dollar
Why it matters: Traders now expect any lasting rebound to depend more on Bank of Japan rate hikes than on more market intervention.
The yen gave back nearly half of the gains from last week's rare joint US-Japan currency intervention, trading around 158.45 to 158.50 per dollar on Friday after briefly strengthening to about 155 earlier in the week. The move has revived bets that Tokyo could step in again if dollar-yen pushes back toward 160. But analysts said intervention alone is unlikely to reverse the broader slide without policy support from the Bank of Japan, which left rates unchanged on July 31. Japan and the US carried out their first coordinated yen-buying operation since 1998 after the currency sank to roughly 163 to 164 per dollar, a near four-decade low.