Some life as been injected in markets overnight, as broad USD strength sees a number of ranges finally broken to inject some life into the start of Q4. It seems a confluence of different factors have come together to lift the USD and the currency markets from their self-induced range trading coma of the last few months. OPEC’s tentative production cut deal, the constant drawdowns in US Crude Inventories pointing to life in the economy, better than expected US data, zero percent rates in the rest of the G10, Britain’s announcement of March 2017 for Article 50. There also seems to be less and less chance of an unexpected “orange swan” in the US presidential elections in November, as the campaign goes on. Combined with the most important factor, an expectation above 60% now for a Fed Funds hike in December, yesterday it all came together with USD buying across the board. Perhaps this underlines my thesis that despite all the noise it’s really all about the Federal Reserve in December. Looking across the markets today, USD/JPY Has been moving higher since last week’s OPEC deal. Japanese importers were badly blindsided by this and have been rushing to buy USD/JPY to cover unhedged oil imports. Natural sellers, in the shape of Japanese exporters, have gleefully pulled offers looking for better levels. Yesterday we saw daily trendline resistance at 101.85 taken out with USD/JPY rushing to 103.00. Expect exporter offers at each big figure now and possibly option related sellers. 103.00 is initial resistance with the 100-day moving average at 103.95 after that.