The USD/JPY pair finds some support near the 144.45 area and stalls its intraday retracement slide from its highest level since November 2022 touched this Friday. Spot prices currently trade around 144.55-144.60 region, nearly unchanged for the day, and seems poised to prolong its recent well-established uptrend witnessed over the past three weeks or so.

Investors’ remain worried  about economic headwinds stemming from rapidly rising borrowing costs and the concerns were further fueled by rather unimpressive Chinese macro data.  In fact, the official Chinese Manufacturing PMI improved slightly to 49 for June, from 48.8 previous, though remained in contraction territory for the third straight month. Meanwhile, the gauge for the services sector surpassed consensus estimates and came in at 53.2 for the reported month, though was lower than the 54.5 recorded in May