By the middle of Friday's trading session the USD/JPY was surging up to the 110.90 level. In general, the rate had found support in the 200-hour SMA at midnight and begun to move upwards.
The pair faced no observable resistance as high as 111.00. However, a previous attempt this week at reaching that level had failed.
The Federal Reserve released the US FOMC Meeting Minutes on Wednesday. The Fed officials provided in-depth insights into the economic and financial conditions that influenced their vote on where to set interest rates.
"Almost all participants thought that it would be desirable to announce before too long a plan to stop reducing the Federal Reserve's asset holdings later this year. Such an announcement would provide more certainty about the process for completing the normalization of the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet," the document said.
Canadian data on Friday
The week will end with the Canadian Core Retail Sales at 13:30 GMT on Friday.The event is scheduled to be covered by Dukascopy Analytics on our Dukascopy Webinars YouTube channel. The stream starts ten minutes before the data release.
For more information watch the weekly Calendar Analysis stream recording.
USD/JPY short term daily review
During the previous trading session, the currency exchange rate was trading sideways below the 61.80% Fibo at 110.60. On Friday morning, the rate was located at the 110.87 mark.In regards to the near-term future, most likely, the US Dollar will bounce off the upper boundary of the freshly drawn medium pattern line at 110.90 to trade sideways during the trading session.
On the other hand, the rate could break the resistance of the freshly drawn medium pattern line at 110.90 to trade at the 111.00 level.
Hourly Chart
On the daily chart, the long term target of the 111.00 has been reached. Namely, the pair reached above it and retraced back down to the 55-day SMA.In general, by looking at the daily chart it can be observed that the pair is expected to trade sideways, as it has ended an upwards aimed wave.
In addition, an ascending pattern has been added to the chart and is being used to show the surge of the USD/JPY of 2019.
Daily chart
On Thursday, 57% of the total open position volume on the Swiss Foreign Exchange was short. By the middle of Friday, the sentiment had increased to 61%.
Meanwhile, in the 100-pip range around the pair trader set up pending orders were set to sell the pair in 56% of cases.
Traders continued to short the pair despite the surge.