LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar briefly touched the closely watched 150 level against the yen on Friday, encouraged by a rise in U.S. 10-year Treasury yields towards 5% after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested there was scope for more rate rises.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury, which nudged at 5% for the first time in 16 years overnight, has risen by 30 basis points this week - marking its biggest weekly rise since April 2022.
War in the Middle East has sparked a push into safe-haven assets such as gold and the Swiss franc , but trading in Treasuries has been dominated by the rate outlook.
Yet this has not translated into a similar boost to the dollar this week, which made only marginal gains while toying with the 150 level against the yen. This number marks the point at which many market participants believe Japan's Ministry of Finance (MOF) could step in to shore up the currency.
"There is a sense that the market is obviously very mindful that the 150 threshold that we're close to again this morning is a potential precursor for the uncertainty of having the MOF on the other side of it," Jeremy Stretch, head of G10 currency strategy at CIBC Capital Markets, said.
"The other factor is we are still in a situation where we've seen the market remain relatively long of dollars anyway, that resumption of adding to those dollar positions is a tough ask," Stretch said.
Speculators have almost doubled their bullish dollar positions against other G10 currencies this month to the most in a year.
Meanwhile, the dollar/yen pair, which on Friday rose by as much as 0.14% to 150.00, was flat at 149.870, tends to track 10-year U.S. yields.
"There is a mindset that the Ministry of Finance will intervene at 150, and that belief has become really sticky," said Shoki Omori, chief Japan desk strategist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.
"But if that sticky belief breaks, that's going to be interesting. There is room for a big move up in dollar-yen, and it could go quickly," Omori said, adding the next key point would be 155 per dollar, the highest since mid-1990.