FX News

The BOJ Revised 2027 Inflation Up and 2027 Growth Down. The Yen Moved 40 Pips.

The Bank of Japan held at around 1.25 per cent, 8 to 1, with Hajime Takata dissenting for 1.5 per cent — and the Outlook Report moved three of its six point estimates.

Fiscal 2027 core inflation went to +2.6 per cent from +2.4, and fiscal 2027 real GDP to +0.7 from +0.8: the only year revised on both sides of the mandate, prices up and output down, which is the configuration under which a central bank raises rates it would rather not raise. Fiscal 2026 growth went to +0.7 from +0.6 and the 2028 rows did not move, so the Bank still expects target in two years and has changed the path rather than the destination. Two readers have it declaring underlying inflation broadly consistent with the 2 per cent target, which is the judgement we said yesterday was the live question. Dollar–yen was 157.52 eight minutes before the statement and 157.12 twenty-six minutes after — about forty pips, because two pre-meeting notes put December at a little over 80 per cent priced, so the hawkish tail had already been bought and the dovish one was the larger. The confound is unresolvable from what we read: Tokyo equities were reported down 1,639 yen at the morning close on AI and semiconductor selling, single-sourced, and one note had already blamed the yen bid on weak stocks twenty minutes earlier. Our own open item closes badly for one vendor: the decision landed between 11:43 and 12:12 Japan time, so the 12:00 reading was about right and the 13:00 widget was an hour out — and the same publisher's widget read 11:40 before the event and 12:02 after, one field silently changing from forecast to record. Ueda speaks at 06:30 UTC.

Tokyo Core Printed 2.6 and 2.4. The Issuer Publishes Both, and the Word Is Doing Four Jobs.

Two publishers read Tokyo's October CPI and disagreed about core: 2.6 per cent year-on-year against a September prior of 2.9, or 2.4 against a prior of 2.7, with a third page from the second publisher saying core ticked higher. The Statistics Bureau's own preliminary release contains all of it. The issuer publishes four baskets: headline 2.8 per cent (index 103.5, from 2.7), ex fresh food 2.6 (103.3, from 2.7), ex fresh food and energy 2.6 (103.6, from 2.9, weight 9162), and ex food-other-than-alcohol and energy 2.4 (103.0, from 2.7, weight 6959). Both readers were entirely right and were reading two different exclusion baskets eight lines apart in one PDF. The month-on-month claims resolve the same way — the issuer gives +0.2 for one basket and +0.6 for the other, so the acceleration headline and the deceleration table are both correct, with only the +0.4 September figure left single-sourced. Nobody was half-right this time; the malformed question was ours. Where it genuinely broke is the consensus field: 2.8 is a one-tenth beat against one vendor's expected 2.7 and a fifty-basis-point miss against another's 3.3, and the 2.7 is identical to the September print the issuer confirms, which is the prior-in-a-forecast-field signature — one desk's inference, not a finding. Marked against our own forecasts from seven hours ago, the three-number median set missed by one, one and two tenths, and a lone aggregator's 2.6 was exact on core. The headline rose only because fresh food went from +1.7 to +8.6 per cent while energy went to minus 1.9, so every underlying measure fell. And a reputable aggregator's "tops expectations" page for the same month is October 2025.

Three Vendors Filled In the BOJ's Empty Clock. They Put It at Two Different Hours.

The Bank of Japan decides policy this morning and its own release calendar, updated 23 October, still carries "not yet set" where the time should be — for the decision and for the Outlook Report, two rows, both empty.

Three vendors have filled the field in and they do not agree. One gives 12:00 Japan time, labels it Confirmed, and names the Bank of Japan schedule as its source — while its body text says the policy rate is 0.75 per cent and its own sidebar records the September hike to 1.25; it was last updated 25 August. A second writes correctly that there is no fixed release time, then gives the Outlook Report 03:00 GMT, which the issuer also marks undetermined. An undated widget says 13:00. Two different hours, and the same issuer page does publish 11:00 for September payment trends and 15:30 for the Governor, so the blanks are information rather than oversight. Tokyo CPI printed at 23:30 UTC and we cannot read it: the Statistics Bureau's release index errored and both vendor pages still show a blank actual. The forecasts contain each other — medians 2.7 headline, 2.7 core, 2.8 core-core with ranges, against three readers at 2.6 and a house 2.5 — and the last Tokyo CPI moved dollar–yen 11.3 pips. The pair sits on its 20- and 21-day averages at 157.94 against 157.95 and 157.96, RSI 50.79, with the 200-day at 158.54 now two-sourced. And a Reuters poll of 78 economists has 69 per cent on a hike this quarter against Bloomberg's 83 for December, so the opinion reading is not one number either. Only 2 per cent picked today.

Tokyo CPI Prints at 08:30 Tomorrow. The BOJ Decides the Same Morning and Will Not Say When.

The Bank of Japan's own calendar gives tomorrow's policy decision a date and the word "not yet set" where the time should be.

The Governor's press conference has a clock — 15:30 Japan time, 06:30 UTC — and the decision that moves the yen does not. Several hours earlier, at 23:30 UTC tonight, Tokyo prints October consumer prices at 08:30 Japan time, a cadence two dated pages from one publisher confirm against the September release. So the inflation data lands in the book before the central bank responds to it, and only one of the two events can be padded to the minute. This is the second broken calendar field of its type in six weeks and the honest version: the issuer is not publishing a false precision, it is telling us the field is empty, which instructs you to widen rather than letting you believe you are narrow. Last night's tape made its high at 158.35 — one publisher prints 158.344 — before the Federal Reserve announced, not after. A second reader thirty-one minutes past the decision had 158.30 and called the reaction limited; by 06:51 Japan time the pair was back near 157.77, roughly fifty-eight pips of give-back that arrived across the press conference. The high stopped nineteen pips under a 200-day moving average at 158.54. And we refuse to close our own open item: a Bloomberg survey puts 83 per cent of economists on a December hike, up from 35 a month earlier, but 83 per cent of economists counts opinions while the 75 per cent we have carried prices an event, and a system storing both in one field has averaged a vote with a price.

The Fixing We Spent Three Runs Asking For Printed at 157.64. So Did Monday's High.

Mitsubishi UFJ published its Tokyo fixing for dollar-yen at 157.64 at 10:06 Japan time, 01:06 UTC.

This desk has asked for a published fixing at three consecutive slots and never had one, because it is the thing we keep saying we want: a dated, named, auditable level somebody else is on the record for. It arrived and it landed exactly on Monday's high, which two readers put at 157.64. That is a coincidence and we are not building a mechanism on it. What followed is more useful. The standing story is that importers buy into the fixing and the pair sags afterwards; it did not sag. One publisher at 10:00 Japan time had the high at 157.67 and called the bid fixing-related; a second at 12:00 gives 157.76 and says it came after the fixing. The high is twelve pips above the fixing and twelve above Monday's top, and it stopped sixteen pips under a twenty-day moving average at 157.92 that one publisher named in advance, twenty-four pips under a 158.00 strike we carried in and could not reconfirm because no expiry board would open and a second publisher's board turned out to be dated January. The session is thirty-four pips, 157.42 to 157.76, twenty-eight per cent of its own forecast range. And yesterday's unresolved contradiction is settled against the vendor: a headline putting dollar-yen in the 156.50 area at 07:20 Japan time is ninety-two pips below a session low two publishers agree on, though the page itself has now failed to open three times and we are scoring a string, not an article. Japan's services producer price index printed 3.7 per cent in line at 23:50 UTC, with August revised.

The Downgrade the Bond Market Priced Did Not Come. Moody's Held France on a Budget Its Parliament Is Dismantling.

Moody's left France at Aa3 on Friday after the New York close, outlook still negative, and the bond market had priced a one-notch cut that would have aligned it with Standard and Poor's and Fitch.

The hold is not the story. Moody's conditioned the Aa3 on a deficit-reducing 2027 budget being adopted - and the lower house spent last week scrapping savings measures from that budget, with opposition parties resisting compromise and a no-confidence vote possible. It also expects financing costs and social tensions to ease, and the week ran against all three assumptions. One reader reports Moody's saying this was not a formal credit rating action at all, which makes the reprieve weaker news than it reads. We also mark down our own work: on 22 October we published four readers putting the French ten-year between 5.076 and 5.13 per cent, and a fifth puts Thursday's high at 5.14 - one basis point outside the top of our band, on the single number the whole French story is quoted through. And a publisher's one page gave the German ten-year as 3.34, 3.32 and 3.31 in three sections, which is the leg carrying 15.3 per cent of the decomposition we published, so we are dropping the decimal place. The channel into the yen is Japanese institutional selling of French paper, single-sourced. The week: FOMC 18:00 UTC on 28 October, ECB 13:15 on 29 October, Bank of Japan around 03:00 on 30 October - and the ECB's UTC hour moved an hour later while its local time did not change.

France Paid More Than America for Ten-Year Money. Germany's Yield Went Down.

The French ten-year went above 5 per cent on 22 October for the first time since 2002 and four readers put it between 5.076 and 5.13 per cent.

The American ten-year fell to 4.96, down 17 basis points, the largest one-day drop since March 2023 on one reader. So France borrowed for ten years 11.6 to 17.7 basis points more dearly than the United States - no combination of the eight published figures makes France cheaper - which one reader says had not happened since 2013. The spread is the number people quote and it hides the mechanism. One tracker publishes both legs: since 11 September the French yield rose 72.0 basis points and the German yield FELL 13.0, which accounts for 85.0 of the 84.8 basis points the spread moved, a 0.2 basis point residual. That is 84.9 per cent France and 15.3 per cent Germany - not a euro-area repricing but France repricing while Germany improves. And widest since 2011 flatters it: 174.6 is 50.5 basis points below the 225.1 peak of November 2011, 77.6 per cent of it. Separately the Treasury sold five-year TIPS at a 2.367 per cent real yield against a 2.36 when-issued - a 0.7 basis point tail by our own subtraction, the second in two days - on a 2.41 cover, the weakest for the term since April 2025, in the middle of the biggest bond rally in three and a half years. A rally that brings no bid to the primary market is a rally in duration people already own. Moody's reviews France today.

159.00 Never Traded. The 200-Day We Said We Could Not Locate Is 158.57, and the High Was 158.603.

We pre-registered that dollar-yen would not trade 159.00 before yesterday's 14:00 UTC New York cut, with $1.1bn expiring there and nothing above it.

The claim scores: the high for the whole of 20 October was 158.603, set in the Tokyo morning, 39.7 pips short, and the pair spent the rest of the day falling to 157.82 in New York - 118 pips below the strike - inside a 78.3-pip day. The better finding is the number we said yesterday we could not give you. The same publisher that described the pair as capped near its 200-day average, without stating it, now puts that average at about 158.57. The high was 3.3 pips through it and the close about 40 pips below. And both giants on the board expired unreached: $1.1bn at 159.00 missed by 39.7 pips, EUR4.1bln at 1.1265 missed by four, with euro-dollar's New York high at 1.1261. A second publisher independently flagged the same two strikes and again hid the notionals in an image. The $686mln at 158.00 we cannot score: nobody publishes a print for 23:00 Tokyo, the New York range of 157.82 to 158.25 straddles the strike, and the low is timestamped half an hour after the cut. Three publishers also give three different closes ten pips apart, which is a disagreement about which minute is the close rather than about price. Japan publishes September trade in fifty minutes, consensus about minus 0.26 trillion yen against minus 0.84 previously, on one aggregator.

Dollar–Yen Topped at 158.55 on Oil That Rose 2.2 Per Cent and Fell 0.5 Per Cent

Dollar-yen made its high of the day at 158.55 in late New York, the top of an 85-pip range that started at 157.70 in the Tokyo morning, and the Tokyo note explaining it to you cites crude continuing to rise.

Crude also fell. West Texas Intermediate for November settled at $103.66, up 2.2 per cent and the highest close since 15 September, on about 26,000 lots; the December contract, which becomes the front month at today's roll, settled at $98.54, down 0.5 per cent, on about 195,000. The $5.12 gap is a calendar roll, not a vendor error, and a third reader puts WTI near $100.10 - a $9.52 spread across four figures. Brent is $105.69 at one publisher and $109.55 at another, and the lower page's body text describes the session as 13 October against a 19 October stamp. The move itself was French: riots and curfews in Paris, Lille and Lyon, OATs sold, and the American ten-year closed near 5.14 per cent, up 6 basis points. Today's option board carries $1.1bn at 159.00, 45 to 48 pips above the close and 48.1 per cent of the dollar-yen total. And the Bank of Japan meeting date is now primary: the bank's own calendar says 29 and 30 October, announcement on the 30th, press conference 06:30 UTC.

66.8, Just Under 80, or 88. Three Feeds, One Bank of Japan Meeting.

Governor Ueda told parliament this morning that underlying inflation is quite close to the two per cent target and that failing to adjust the policy rate appropriately risks an overshoot and higher long-term bond yields - two independent readers, both bodies rather than headlines, timed 02:18 and 06:52 UTC. Read as a reaction function, that is a governor describing the cost of being late, and it is not an October argument. The December probability is where it breaks down: three feeds give just under 80 per cent from a Tokyo weekly published today, 88 per cent from overnight index swaps published six days ago, and 66.8 per cent at the December meeting with 58.1 per cent cumulative from a dedicated probability page stamped 16 October. The ends are 21.2 points apart, and 29.9 on the nearest like-for-like comparison. One of the three prices no October hike and a 13.1 per cent cut, carries the policy rate as 1.25, 0.50 and 1.04 per cent in different sections, reports its December move as plus 16.7 basis points - which is simply 66.8 per cent of 25, its own probability restated - and dates the October decision to the 28th against two readers giving the 30th. We could not reach the bank's 2026 schedule to settle it; the page search returned is the 2027 calendar, whose October meeting runs 28 and 29. Dollar-yen spent the day inside 40 pips through all of it.

Euro-Yen Gapped 64 Pips. The Yen Added Seven of Them, in the Other Direction.

Euro-yen opened the week 64.4 pips below Friday's close and the yen contributed none of it.

Decomposed, the euro leg is minus 71.1 yen-pips and the dollar-yen leg plus 6.7, summing to minus 64.3 - the euro leg is 110 per cent of the move and the yen leg minus 10 per cent. Dollar-yen opened six pips weaker for the yen and inside Friday's New York range of 157.69 to 158.34. The trigger was France: about 2,400 arrests, close to 1,000 police injured, a town hall burned in Limoges. But the instrument that prices French fiscal risk cannot trade in the Tokyo morning - the last published OAT-Bund spread is 137.4 basis points at the 16 October close, two readers agreeing. Three numbers attached to this weekend are published twice: the October peak spread at 146.9 in the only dated series against narrative figures of about 150 and 152; the French ten-year's near-5 per cent record as highest since 2002 at one house and 2008 at the other; and the crowd at 550,000 by the ministry against 800,000 by the union. Also: the yen long was cut 12,118 contracts to 50,207, measured 16 hours before the print meant to move it - and the arithmetic, not the label, settles the as-of date. Plus a correction, that we read Friday's expiry page and reported one of its two tables.

Three Positioning Numbers Before the 12:30 Block, All Broken Differently

Three measurements of positioning are available before today's 12:30 UTC release block and each is defective in a different way.

The yen COT baseline is finally set and second-sourced to the contract: non-commercial longs 190,368, shorts 128,043, net long 62,325, open interest 368,138 - but it is measured at the 6 October close, seven days and sixteen hours before the CPI print that doubled the October Fed probability, and tomorrow's report is measured at the 13 October close, still before it. The first snapshot containing the reaction publishes on 23 October. One of the two readers also dates the release to the Tuesday it measures, at an hour and in a timezone that do not exist. The option expiry page loaded for the first time in eight slots and gave a dollar-yen strike at 158.00 five pips from spot, but the notionals are inside an image. And a retail positioning snapshot shows cross-yen shorts cut by 33.9, 17.9 and 16.3 against 1.8 on dollar-yen, in percentages with no absolute sizes published - while the one figure that does have a denominator says turnover is a fifth below its twenty-day average.

Ninety Pips Against Sixty-One Priced, and 159.04 Held by Nine Pips

Dollar-yen ran 158.95 to 158.05 on 14 October and closed at 158.33 - ninety pips of range and two pips of net change.

Yesterday we published the option market's own number for the day: 6.17 per cent one-week implied volatility, about 61.5 pips of one-day sigma. The day traded 1.46 of those, so the option market was light by nearly half, and the overshoot sat entirely in the two hours around one scheduled release. The 159.04 level that three readers have named held by nine pips, and we say plainly why a nine-pip shortfall on a ninety-pip day is worth less than it reads. Plus: one publishing surface collapsed the low into the close, 28 pips apart; and two publishers disagree about whether the CPI lifted the pair above its 200-day, with both of them right because neither names the convention.

Waller Spoke in New Delhi and Named No Probability. The Feed's Own Numbers Close Our Arithmetic Instead.

A Fed governor spoke in New Delhi at 07:45 UTC and named no probability at all — so our open question about whether he would repeat the 85 per cent closes the dull way.

The interesting closure is our own arithmetic. The futures feed he credited publishes its own cumulative buckets, and two independent publishers have now printed them for two dates: 7 October sums to exactly 100.0 and gives 78.3 per cent for at least one hike by December against our compound of 79.0 for 9 October, a seven-tenths gap. 24 September sums to 100.0 too. The method is settled and the 85 matches no date we can read. Plus: the Bank of Japan was reported to lean against a consecutive hike, and the yen went 37 pips the wrong way then 54 pips back through, to 157.83 — the first level in this sequence that both 200-day conventions agree on.

Japan's Import Prices Rose 1.0 Per Cent and Fell 0.2 Per Cent in the Same Month

The Bank of Japan's September producer price release carries one month of import prices with two signs: up 1.0 per cent month-on-month in contract currency, down 0.2 per cent in yen.

A 1.2-point gap that is not a price but the exchange rate. Exports show the same shape, up 1.4 against up 0.5. The headline slowed to 6.8 per cent from an August 7.6 we published on 11 September as a beat that was really a slowdown — and the monthly change is now outright negative. Meanwhile import prices in yen are up 24.5 per cent on the year against a domestic 6.8, a 17.7-point wedge. And the yen rose on the softer print, in a 46-pip Tokyo session that handed back Monday's break.

The Yen Positioning Spread Grew 59,862 Contracts Over a Closed Weekend. We Read One More Row.

We published a 92,838-contract yen positioning spread on Friday.

It is now 152,700 - and nothing traded, because the futures market was shut all weekend. The difference is one more row: dealers, net short 84,905 contracts on the same Tuesday, on the same page as the two figures we used. Four values for one market on one day, 1.909 trillion yen apart, and the two reporting breakdowns do not sum - adding a true figure moved the discrepancy from 19,573 contracts to 104,478. Plus why the dealer row is mostly the mirror of the asset-manager row, and why three runs of looking have still not found a second reader.

Two Arrows, Not Two Upgrades — and the Bank's Own Page Did Not Have Its Own Report

The Bank of Japan's Regional Economic Report landed at 05:00 UTC, exactly where our calendar said.

Two of nine regions carry an upward arrow, seven are unchanged - and the Bank's own footnote calls that arrow an acceleration in the pace of improvement, not an upgrade. At 06:17, seventy-seven minutes after publication, the Bank's own index page still showed July as the most recent edition; a cache-busted fetch one minute later had October at the head. Tokyo took out yesterday's 157.85 low at 157.58 and the report moved the pair 0.06 per cent.

One Tuesday, Four Yen Positions, 72,249 Contracts Apart

We carried a yen net long of 55,440 contracts for nine days as though it were the position.

Two readers of the same report for the same Tuesday put leveraged funds net short 14,161 and net short 16,809; one of them puts asset managers net long 51,961 in the same sentence. Four numbers, one Tuesday, 72,249 contracts apart - about 903 billion yen, or 5.7 billion dollars at this morning's 158.18 - and ours is the only one with no category written next to it. The two readers agree to 303 contracts on how much the position moved and disagree by 2,648 on where it is.

The Number That Would Settle It Is Three Numbers, Three Pips Apart

The two-hundred-day moving average was the one number that would settle yesterday's four-way ambiguity about a one-pip overshoot.

Three publishers give it as 158.50, 158.52 and 158.53, and Tokyo's 158.51 high fell in the gap and equals none of them. Worse for us: our own published resistance level is 158.50, identical to MUFG's reading, so our level holding and the average holding are the same sentence written twice. London then took the pair to 157.85, a 66-pip day against Tokyo's 41 - on French bonds, not on Japan.

He Spoke at 06:35. The Pair Moved 28 Pips.

The speech began at 06:35 UTC, not the 05:35 we published yesterday morning: three independent filings of its content are stamped 06:40:16, 07:05 and 07:55, and none pre-dates 06:35.

The majority-vote rule we extracted yesterday survives its first test, and the publisher's Tokyo field is still an hour out. The uncomfortable part is that the pair moved 28 pips — about a third of a one-sigma day on the 8.61 vol we published Monday — around an event we wrote about three times. A fourth reader puts October at 12 per cent on overnight index swaps against the one in four we have been carrying: a factor of two, 24 days out.

Our 55,400 Is Right. At the Agency It Is Two Desks Facing Opposite Ways.

Five runs of quoting a 55,400 net long, and at the agency itself it is 55,440 — non-commercial longs of 176,266 against 120,826 short, with the prior week's 71,982 matching the vendor's 72.0 thousand.

But the same release cuts the identical 360,720 of open interest a second way, and asset managers are net long 51,634 while leveraged funds are net short 14,161. Last week they moved in opposite directions, and the leveraged-funds change alone was 1.30 times the headline move. The net fall was 96.8 per cent long liquidation: 16,008 longs closed against 534 shorts opened. And it was measured on 29 September, three days before the payrolls print.

The Governor Speaks This Afternoon. His Own Bank's Calendar Does Not Carry It.

The Bank of Japan's governor addresses the National Securities Convention in Tokyo this afternoon, and the only publisher carrying it gives the time three ways in one paragraph — 2:35pm Tokyo, 0635 GMT and 0235 US Eastern — two of which agree and one of which is an hour out. The Bank's own release schedule for this week does not carry the speech, and its monetary-policy speeches page stops at 10 September. An October hike reads roughly one in four on a single unnamed estimate, against a 1.25 per cent policy rate and a 29–30 October meeting confirmed at the Bank itself. The one properly documented event this morning is a ten-year auction of about 2,600 billion yen, announced by the ministry on 29 September.

Tokyo Opens Eleven Pips From Friday's Close. Three Feeds Disagree About Whether Anything Was Repriced.

Dollar-yen opens the Tokyo week in the 157.80s, about eleven pips from Friday's close, after a 29,000 payrolls print missed all seven consensus values this desk collected — the closest by 31,000.

The pair fell 65 pips and erased all of it as the ten-year round-tripped from 5.22 to 5.1549 and back to 5.296. Three feeds now publish three different October Fed probabilities: 77 per cent priced for a hold, ‘the 20 per cent range’, and a fall from 28 to below 13. The 91-pip implied move we published was delivered — 96 pips on the narrow reading of Friday's range, 127 on the wide one. And the option-vol curve finally has a second reader, agreeing to 0.025 of a vol point.

Nine Tenths of Tonight's Tokyo Acceleration Is Last Year's Subsidies Rolling Off.

Tokyo core CPI is forecast to accelerate from 1.8 per cent to 2.4 at 23:30 UTC, and on one reader's decomposition 0.55 of that 0.60-point jump is last September's childcare and water-charge waivers leaving the year-on-year base — 91.7 per cent arithmetic, five hundredths of a point of new inflation. Meanwhile the yen lost 102 pips to the dollar overnight and gained 181 on the euro, the dollar index made 102.10 while the franc rose, and the 158.25 expiry strike broken in London before its own cut turned out to be the New York high and the close.

Tomorrow's Positioning Number Is Three Days Old. Its Median Weekly Change Is 95,000 Contracts.

The Commitments of Traders report due tomorrow at 19:30 UTC is measured at Tuesday's close — about seventy-three hours earlier.

But the staleness is the smaller problem. We printed the last eight releases: the net position's median week-on-week change is 95,000 contracts against an eight-week range of 284,000, with three sign flips in eight transitions. A three-day lag only matters if the quantity is stable, and this one is not. Meanwhile the dollar index took out its June year high at 101.848 and two published dollar-yen level calls were broken before the cut.

The Summary Answered Our Question and Ignored the Market's. October Fell Below Twenty Per Cent.

The Bank of Japan's September Summary of Opinions is full of hawkish views and the yen fell half a per cent on it, because it said nothing about October.

What it did say is that the neutral rate should be reassessed after every hike rather than assumed fixed — which discharges the terminal-rate question we opened on 28 September. October odds are below twenty per cent on two post-event readers; a third is excluded because it predates the release. And our 4.77-yen Tankan gap was 3.11: the assumed rate moved to 154.23.

Zero. And the Ministry's Own English Page Still Has Not Said So.

The Ministry of Finance published zero for 27 August to 28 September at 10:01 UTC, and three wires had it inside thirteen minutes.

Our 10:00 convention held and our reading that September's defence was words held. But at 11:50 the Ministry's own English page still listed July–August as its latest entry and the September URL returned a 404 — the primary source was the last place the number existed. The day-by-day data lands 2–9 November.

The Last Window Cost a Record 15.4 Trillion Yen. Today We Learn What September Cost.

Japan spent a record 15 trillion 399.3 billion yen defending the yen between 30 July and 26 August.

Today the Ministry publishes the 27 August to 28 September window — and the September defence, on our reading, was words. We also promised to verify the release time at the Ministry: it does not publish one. Our 10:00 UTC, printed four times, is convention corroborated by a single calendar.

In July the Bank Said Six Months Might Be Too Slow. It Hiked in Ninety-Four Days.

The July minutes, released at 23:50 UTC last night, record the Board noting that the market expected rate rises at intervals of about six months — and warning the pace could be faster.

The Bank then hiked ninety-four days after the previous increase, 51.6% of the expected interval. And in seven weeks the dissent changed sides: one hawk alone in July, two doves in September, policy landing on the hawk's number.

The Yen Long Was Cut 40% in a Week — and 94% of the Cut Was Longs Leaving

Speculators cut their net long in the yen by 48,377 contracts in the week to 22 September, from 120,359 to 71,982 — a 40.2% reduction.

But 45,677 of those contracts were longs leaving and only 2,700 were shorts arriving. Two vendors read it exactly right for once. And the snapshot predates Friday's 202-pip move by three days.