Greg had the Commitments of Traders data up on Friday: JPY shorts fell to the lowest level since April 28th when shorts were at -5K

A few bank notes are highlighting this also

Deutsche Bank notes the movement:

  • Specs were again net short in GBP futures (after a week) by 11K contracts,selling 15K contracts over the week. However, they decreased their net shorts inJPY and AUD futures by 24K and 8K contracts, respectively.

ANZ make special note of the change in GBP and JPY (bolding is mine):

  • The two largest positioning changes occurred in JPY and GBP
  • Short JPY positions have been reduced by USD3.3bn to USD5.1bn (see Figure 6)
  • The Japanese yen has typically gained during bouts of financial market volatility, and this time is no different
  • The reduction in JPY short positions have helped the yen gain against the USD

Westpac (Sean Callow) makes the point that the shift in positioning removes an impediment to a USD/JPY rally:

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While the reduced positioning does make a USD/JPY rally more achievable, its going to take more than this one development.