• GBP/JPY touches fresh 16-year highs as Yen continues to backslide.
• Japanese Retail Trade ticked higher, Tokyo CPI inflation next on the docket.
• UK GDP revision slated for Friday, little change expected.

GBP/JPY tapped a fresh 16-year high of 203.39 on Thursday as the Yen continues ot get pushed lower across the board. An uptick in Japanese Retail Sales early Thursday failed to spark a recovery in the Yen as JPY traders buckle down for the last print of Japan’s Tokyo Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation due early Friday.

The UK will also be delivering a fresh revision to first-quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures, but little change is expected and Q1 UK GDP is expected to hold steady at 0.6%, in-line with the initial print.

Core Tokyo CPI is expected to tick upwards slightly to 2.0% YoY in June, but the upswing is likely not enough to push the Bank of Japan (BoJ) out of its stubborn, long-running hypereasy monetary policy stance. With BoJ reference rates <wbr>functionally at zero and a significant ratio of Japanese government bonds scooped up by the Japanese central bank itself, the Yen’s battered stance is unlikely to change, regardless of a carousel of increasingly concerned threats of direct intervention in FX markets by Japan’s Ministry of Finance.