USD/JPY Outlook – January 3-7

The yen enjoyed the falling dollar to end the year at a very impressive gain against the greenback. The upcoming week doesn’t feature any Japanese events, so the pair will move on US events and not technical barriers. Here’s an outlook for USD/JPY on the first week of 2011.

Also a neat rise in retail sales helped the Japanese yen in the past week. USD/JPY is getting close to all time lows, and this will put pressure on the BOJ for intervention. Note that the correlation between the US bond yields and the strength of the pair has diminished.

USD/JPY daily chart with support and resistance lines marked. Click to enlarge:

USD/JPY Technical Analysis:

Dollar/Yen went in one direction in the past week – down. It fell off the important 82.87 line (mentioned last week), before bouncing off 81.34 and then breaking it. The close at 81.13 already threatens lower levels.

Looking up, th 82 line now provides immediate resistance. A small attempt to recover fell short of it in the past week. It was also a resistance line when the pair was trading lower in October. Above, 82.34 is only minor support. It was a low point in December.

Above, 82.87 was the lowest level before the intervention and now provides resistance.  83.40 is the next line of resistance, after the recent fall.

Above, 84.40, that proved to be a strong line in recent months is already a big hurdle. .  Above, 85.93 is the highest level reached after the big intervention in September, and is strong resistance as well.

Higher, the next lines are rather close – 86.35 was a support line in July and later switched to resistance. Right afterwards,  86.88, that worked as support earlier.

More important resistance is found at 88.10, which was a support line in March and later served as resistance. The last resistance line for now is 89.15 which capped the pair quite some time ago.

Looking down,  80.87 is a weak line of suport, after providing support at the beginning of October. It’s followed by the strong  80.40 – the lowest close the pair ever had. The last line for now is the lowest intra-day low of all times 79.75, reached back in 1995.

I am bullish on USD/JPY.

The Japanese economy isn’t doing too well, and it’s also due to the strong currency. Even without an intervention, a reversal o this fall is likely.

For further reading:

• For a broad view of all the week’s major events worldwide, read the  USD outlook.
• For EUR/USD, check out  the  Euro/Dollar forecast.
• For GBP/USD  (cable), look into the  British Pound forecast.
• For the Australian dollar (Aussie), check out the  AUD to USD forecast.
• For the New Zealand dollar (kiwi), read the  NZD forecast.
• For USD/CAD (loonie), check out the  Canadian dollar.