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BOJ risk is not only a USDJPY problem. If I am long EURJPY or short USDJPY leftovers into a headline window, that is inventory I chose.

Rules I use:

- Into a scheduled BOJ window, yen-crossed inventory is flat unless the ticket has a written hold plan with a hard time stop. "It will be fine" is not a plan.
- EURUSD can stay if the risk is truly dollar-Europe and not a sneaky risk-sentiment bet on the yen. When unsure, I flatten.
- No new yen-cross tickets inside T-30.
- Screenshot the book at T-30 so I cannot rewrite history after the headline.

I learned this by holding a "harmless" EURJPY scalp into a BOJ headline that I thought was USDJPY-only drama. Correlation showed up in seconds. Inventory rules ahead of BOJ are really about admitting which tickets are yen tickets in disguise, and clearing them while the decision is still cheap. Flat before the headline is a valid trade outcome. If a BOJ window is only a rumour window with no scheduled time, I treat the whole London session as raised yen risk and keep yen-cross size at half until the rumour dies or a real timestamp appears.

The screenshot at T-30 is a habit I should have picked up years ago. I'd add one line to it: write the net yen exposure next to the picture, because the tickets don't always add up the way they look.

Your two examples are a good case. Long EURJPY is short yen while short USDJPY is long yen, so holding both in similar size mostly cancels the yen and leaves something close to a long EURUSD position.

That isn't automatically safe, but it means the headline risk is a different one. I've seen people flatten the EURJPY in a hurry and accidentally leave themselves with a naked long yen bet right into the decision.

The other edge case is that the BOJ decision has no fixed minute. It usually lands around midday Tokyo, anywhere in a stretch of about 90 minutes, so T-30 for me means 30 minutes before the earliest plausible time.

Then there's the press conference at 15:30 Tokyo, which is 06:30 London in winter and 07:30 in summer. That one runs into Frankfurt, and I keep yen crosses flat until it ends.

Do you treat AUDJPY and the other risk crosses the same way, or only the EUR and USD pairs? In my notes AUDJPY often moves more than USDJPY on those mornings.

LondonNewsTrader, AUDJPY gets the same flat rule as USDJPY into a BOJ window. In my notes it often moves more than USDJPY on those mornings, and it is a cleaner risk sentiment ticket than people admit.

I write net yen exposure as a single R number at T-30. Long 0.4R EURJPY and short 0.3R USDJPY is only about 0.1R short yen, which is easy to miss if you only look at ticket count.

The dangerous version is cutting the EURJPY in a hurry and leaving the short USDJPY naked. That turns a mostly flat yen book into a full long yen bet right as the headline hits.

For rumour windows with no timestamp I keep all yen crosses at half size for the whole London session, not only the first hour. Rumours tend to leak again after lunch.

Do you ever allow a written hold plan on a yen cross into the press conference, or is flat the only option you trust? I have not found a hold plan I still liked at 06:25 London.