USD/JPY & BoJ Policy: The Complete Forex Trader's Guide 2026
The 160 level in USD/JPY is not just technical resistance, it functions as a policy feedback trigger whose credibility rises with each confirmed intervention and decays with each missed follow-through, creating an asymmetric volatility regime. BoJ verbal intervention reliably compresses implied volatility in the short term, but without follow-through action, the pair tends to retest highs within weeks, meaning the intervention premium itself becomes tradeable. The yen carry trade, borrowing JPY at near-zero rates to fund higher-yielding assets, remains the structural driver of USD/JPY positioning, and carry unwind events produce some of the sharpest short-term moves in G10 FX.