Overnight

The desk's screen carries one live price and a wall of Friday's. The yen is ¥157.89 — where this column left it on Saturday morning — and the ticker's change field reads +1.41%, which is the board's arithmetic, not a weekend trade; there was none. The ten-year Treasury note is 5.00%, the ticker reading +1.24%, and the S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,650.50, up 0.17%, with the Nasdaq at 26,522.55, up 0.39%. The weekend's substantive item was a decision, not a price: the Bank of Japan raised its policy rate to 1.25% at 11:54 on Friday, Tokyo time, on a 7–2 vote, and the new guideline takes effect on 24 September.

Asia and Europe

Both finished Friday and neither has printed since. Asia closed the stronger: the Nikkei 225 at 65,018.73, up 1.38% — Tokyo's first close after the decision and its last price until Thursday; the Hang Seng at 24,750.79, up 0.60%. Europe closed weaker by a distance: the DAX at 25,304.06, down 1.60%; the FTSE 100 at 10,659.13, down 1.45%.

FX, rates and commodities

Every FX level here is Friday's, carried unchanged through the weekend: EUR/USD 1.1460, sterling 1.3344, USD/HKD 7.8449, near the weak side of its 7.75–7.85 band. WTI is US$96.08 and gold US$4,379; the ticker carries no percentage for either, so the desk quotes the level and stops. Crypto is the exception, and only just: bitcoin 81,232, up 0.12%, and ether 2,631.50, up 0.49% — the only prices on the board that moved since Friday night.

The day ahead

Monday reopens only part of what Sunday shuts. New York and Europe return; Tokyo does not. Cash trading is closed Monday for Respect for the Aged Day, Tuesday under the holiday law's bridging provision and Wednesday for the autumn equinox, as JPX's own calendar has it. Osaka Exchange keeps its holiday derivatives session open, so index futures still print — but JGB futures are not on that list, which leaves the market this decision was aimed at dark until Thursday 24 September, the day the guideline takes effect.

One number

1.25% — the Bank of Japan's policy rate after Friday's 7–2 decision, raised from "around 1.0 percent" in the Bank's own words. The statement makes no claim about how rare that level is; this column will not add one.

One read

The trade under the yen is one our markets desk took apart on 11 September: The yen carry trade is crowded again, and the exit is still narrow. It was written with the yen near 154 and the Nikkei near 64,000; the crowding it describes has not been unwound, only repriced — the same screen reads 157.89 and 65,018.73 — and the exit it measured is no wider.