The yen can’t seem to catch a break this month, disappointing traders banking on a rebound as the currency slid to the weakest levels this year.
(Bloomberg) — The yen can’t seem to catch a break this month, disappointing traders banking on a rebound as the currency slid to the weakest levels this year.
The Japanese currency tumbled broadly on Thursday, losing ground versus all its Group-of-10 peers. It dropped almost 1% against the greenback, trading weaker than 143 per dollar for the first time since November, and touched the lowest level against the Swiss franc in Bloomberg data beginning in the early 1970s. Against the euro, the yen fell to a point last seen in 2008.
At the heart of the slide, market watchers say, is the growing disparity between Japan’s easy monetary policy and the much more aggressive efforts by its major counterparts to hike interest rates to tame inflation.
“The fundamental driver of the yen’s weakness is the divergence of interest rates,” said Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global.
On Thursday, the Bank of England surprised markets with a half-point hike, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signaled this week that the central bank expects to lift rates further this year. The Bank of Japan, however, left its ultra-loose monetary policy unchanged this month. It’s next scheduled to meet in July and then September.
Japanese policymakers have voiced concern over the stability of the yen relative to major trading partners. That’s raising questions over whether they might choose to intervene in the foreign-exchange market to support their currency, as they did late last year, when the yen touched 151.95 per dollar, its weakest in decades. Japan spent a record 6.3 trillion yen ($44 billion) in October to counter the slide.
Read More: Japan Spent Record Amount in October to Prop Up Yen
Investor buying at quarter-end and corporate hedging flows have also contributed to the yen’s weakness, and traders speculated that a move to 145 per dollar would meet little pushback.
It’s the Bank of Japan’s September meeting that traders increasingly see as a potential risk event. As evidence, a measure of three-month yen volatility is rising compared to the one-month tenor.
Major central banks, including the Fed, the European Central Bank and the BOE have been consistent in messaging “that they do not believe rates are high enough to achieve their inflation targets in a desired timeframe, given labor-market resilience,” said Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at Deutsche Bank. “The messaging outside the BOJ has been extraordinary for its consistency.”
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