The USD/JPY currency pair attempted to recover late on Friday after extending Thursday’s pullback early on. The pair had rallied mid-week to trade at a weekly high of about 108.164 before pulling back on Thursday and Friday morning to bottom at around 107.576.

The USD/JPY later on trimmed those losses by advancing to end the session at around 107.912 but a further upside was restricted by a firm short-term trendline resistance. Generally, the USD/JPY currency pair continues to experience downward pressure amid trade tensions and mixed US economic data.

USD/JPY Fundamentals Overview

From a fundamental perspective, the USD/JPY currency pair is trading at the back of mixed week for both the greenback and the Japanese Yen. On Friday, Japan’s Housing starts data for May showed missed expectations with a decline of 8.7% compared to an expected decline of 4.3% on a YoY basis.

Construction orders posted a similar decline to the previous period of 16.9% while annualized Housing starts for May fell to 0.900 million from 0.931 million in the previous period.

In the US, Core Personal Consumption expenditure was in line with expectations on MoM basis and the previous period growth after posting an increase of 0.2% in May.

USD/JPY Technical Analysis (the 60-min Chart)

From a technical viewpoint, the USD/JPY currency pair appears to be forming a consolidative pattern in the 60-min chart following the recent rally. The pair now trades within a  tight range of 107.576-108.164.

The two levels provide strong support and resistance zones, which the bears and the bulls will be targeting for short-term profits. Given the position of the trendline resistance, the bears will be more optimistic going into next week but the bulls will be hopeful that the pair can breach the resistance.

USD/JPY Technical Analysis (the Daily Chart)

In the daily chart, the USD/JPY currency pair appears to be choppier with huge fluctuations in the exchange rate. The most recent shift in the pair came towards the end of last year. And by using the Fibonacci retracements, the pair appears well poised for both the bulls and the bears to profit.

The bulls will target long-term profits slightly above the 38.20% Fib level ay 108.734 while the bears will target profits around the 23.60% Fib level at 107.026.

In summary, the USD/JPY currency pair continues to enjoy a short-term bearish bias but no one is winning the battle in the long-term as demonstrated in the daily chart.