USD/JPY closed at 159.71, down 0.0376, leaving the yen marginally firmer; EUR/USD at 1.1088, down 0.009, keeps the euro soft; USD/CNY at 6.6689, down 0.0435, puts the renminbi on the firm side too. Asian currencies are splitting against the dollar: soft euro, firmer yen and RMB.

Resale trades are mostly financed in dollars through offshore letters of credit, but the funding currency need not be the dollar. With USD/JPY near 160, the cost of borrowing in yen (the carry on the yen leg) swings with the rate; a stronger yen raises the borrower's repayment burden and pushes the desk to shift the funding leg back to dollars or RMB.

The settlement side is changing faster. The old correspondent-bank RMB path took T+2 and usually carried an NDF to hedge the FX gap; CIPS direct clearing pulls arrival to T+1, removes the intermediary bank, and cuts one round of spread leakage. For multi-currency resale, RMB direct clearing is turning the dollar leg from mandatory into optional.

The operational point is plain: the exchange rate is not a backdrop, it is a second layer of delivered cost. Picking the funding currency and choosing CIPS over the correspondent path adds or shaves basis points straight out of the margin.