The yen dropped to its weakest level in four months versus the broadly stronger US dollar in today’s Asian session.

USDJPY hit a session high of 100.80 yen and ended the session with a 0.6% gain at 100.70 yen.

The diverging monetary policies between the Bank of Japan and the Fed are causing a wider gap between US bond yields and Japanese JGB yields and hence a higher dollar versus yen.

The Bank of Japan left its monetary policy unchanged during its meeting today while the Fed last night signaled it could scale back stimulus as soon as the next meeting.

The euro is under pressure due to market rumors of the ECB is considering negative deposit rates. The broadly stronger dollar is also putting pressure on the euro.

EURUSD fell to a low of 1.3412 in the Asian session, and ended with a 0.06% loss at 1.3428. GBPUSD ended the session down 0.08% at 1.6089.

The Australian dollar took a beating after disappointing data from China, which is Australia’s largest trading partner. AUDUSD closed the Asian session with a 0.2% loss at 0.9304.

The Chinese HSBC manufacturing flash PMI index of business confidence for November dipped to 50.4 compared to 50.9 the previous month.