Dollar rides Treasury yields higher, yen flirts with key 150 level

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SINGAPORE — The dollar loomed over major peers on Thursday as Treasury yields peaked at multi-year highs, while the yen slid to a fresh 32-year low and kept markets on high alert for any signs of an intervention.

The surging greenback also pushed the Chinese offshore yuan to a record low, and left the Aussie and the kiwi tumbling.

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Against a basket of currencies, the U.S. dollar index was up 0.08% to 113.07, after rising almost 1% overnight.

“You still can’t write off the U.S. dollar, I’m still not convinced that we’ve necessarily seen the highs for this cycle,” said Ray Attrill, head of FX strategy at National Australia Bank (NAB).

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The Japanese yen hit a fresh trough of 149.96 per dollar, its lowest since August 1990, and last bought 149.92.

It has been on a losing streak for 11 straight sessions as of Wednesday’s close, and has renewed 32-year lows for six sessions now.

“Looks like it’s the rabbit caught in the headlights at the moment,” said NAB’s Attrill.

“Given that Treasury yields have moved decisively above 4%, were it not for the threat of intervention then I think dollar/yen would already be trading north of 150.”

The benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.154%, its highest level since mid-2008, while the two-year Treasury yields touched a 15-year high of 4.582%.

Last month, Japan intervened in the foreign exchange market to buy yen for the first time since 1998, in an attempt to shore up the battered currency.

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Similarly, the offshore yuan fell to a record low on Thursday. It bottomed at 7.2794 per dollar, the lowest level since such data first became available in 2011, and last traded 7.2615.

“Higher U.S. bond yields, sell-offs in Chinese stocks, concerns over a harsher line on income redistribution in China, and reports about talks on the joint production of weapons between the U.S. and Taiwan weighed on the yuan,” said Charu Chanana, market strategist at Saxo Markets.

The U.S. government is considering a plan to jointly produce weapons with Taiwan, a business lobby said on Wednesday, an initiative intended to speed up arms transfers to bolster Taipei’s deterrence against China.

Elsewhere, sterling fell 0.2% to $1.1201, even as data released on Wednesday showed that the biggest jump in food prices since 1980 pushed British inflation back into double digits last month.

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The inflation numbers continue a turbulent week for the pound, after Jeremy Hunt earlier this week scrapped Prime Minister Liz Truss’s economic plan and scaled back her vast energy subsidy.

Britain’s interior minister quit on Wednesday with a broadside at Liz Truss before her lawmakers openly quarreled in parliament, underscoring the erosion of the prime minister’s authority after just weeks in the job.

The euro was down 0.1% to $0.9762.

Meanwhile, the kiwi slumped 0.87% to $0.5627, easing from a brief rally earlier this week. It had hit an almost two-week high of $0.5719 on Tuesday, following release of a hot inflation data, prompting bets of a more aggressive central bank rate hike.

The Aussie fell 0.58% to $0.6234, with

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Thursday’s data

showing hints that Australia’s very tight labor market might finally be loosening.

Nonetheless, this week’s scorching inflation prints from Britain, New Zealand and

Canada

speak to the fact that central banks across the globe are far from taming decades-high inflation, even at the expense of stifling growth.

Overnight, Fed officials also continued their hawkish rhetoric, as Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said that U.S. job market demand remains strong and underlying inflation pressures probably have not peaked yet.

(Reporting by Rae Wee; Editing by Stephen Coates and Kim Coghill)