Today on USDJPY – NFP Rules.

Pls NOTE: As always, if there’s one particular day in every month that trending method/pattern traders should be wary of trading most, it has to be the first Fridays of every month when the Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) report is usually released.
While I’ll go ahead to give my personal analysis on the USDJPY pair, please, let’s bear in mind that, regardless of any technical analyses, NFP usually rules today.

On the Daily chart above, since late last month, price has been in an upward retracement in an overall visible longer term downtrend. However, currently, the bulls seem to have reached a critical resistance-confluence where the bears might attempt to take control: price is now around a downward or bearish trend-line (that we’ve highlighted using the red solid line), which we expect might restrain any further bullish move, at least temporarily. In addition, current price position is also around a major resistance level – the most recent Weekly swing low @ 87.99 (which we’ve highlighted on the Daily chart using the upper blue broken line). In the case of the 87.99 resistance level, since it has been breached yesterday, depending on where price closes at the end of today, it would end up retaining its resistance level “status” or becoming a new support level: price break above previous day’s high @ 88.47 (not highlighted) should validate it as a new support level.

On the H4 chart above, price broke, at that time, the most recent swing high @ 87.37 (which we’ve highlighted using the lower blue broken line) upward. That automatically sustained our bias in favor of an upward price move. However, as discussed on the Daily chart, the bulls are, at the moment, probably in the bears’ zone, hence to be convinced of the bulls’ strength, we would like to see price break above the previous day’s high – also the most recent swing high @ 88.47 (which we’ve highlighted using the upper blue broken line).
The green horizontal line @ 86.50 highlights the most recent swing low, and as long as price stays above it – in the absence of any new and higher swing low – our bullish or upward bias remains intact; but, again, today is “NFP Day”, please let’s keep that in mind.