The USD/JPY pair falls to its 11-week lows near 154.20 during the early Asian session on Tuesday. The Japanese Yen (JPY) strengthens against the US Dollar (USD) amid speculation about a possible coordinated intervention by Japanese and US authorities.
Speculation of intervention is growing after traders reported during Friday’s US session that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had contacted financial institutions to ask about the JPY’s exchange rate. Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama declined to comment on the rate checks, while Japan Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara said on Monday that he will take appropriate action on foreign exchange according to the Japan-US joint statement.
“Intervention only delays, but not reverses the yen depreciation trend in the current macro set up where there is focus on increased fiscal spending,” said Rong Ren Goh, a fixed-income portfolio manager at Eastspring Investments.
Japan is preparing for an election on February 8, with Takaichi’s vow to lower food tariffs causing shockwaves in the Japanese debt market in recent days. This has fueled worries about Japan’s already large government debt, which tends to weaken the Japanese Yen against the Greenback.
The Japanese Yen (JPY) is one of the world’s most traded currencies. Its value is broadly determined by the performance of the Japanese economy, but more specifically by the Bank of Japan’s policy, the differential between Japanese and US bond yields, or risk sentiment among traders, among other factors.
One of the Bank of Japan’s mandates is currency control, so its moves are key for the Yen. The BoJ has directly intervened in currency markets sometimes, generally to lower the value of the Yen, although it refrains from doing it often due to political concerns of its main trading partners. The BoJ ultra-loose monetary policy between 2013 and 2024 caused the Yen to depreciate against its main currency peers due to an increasing policy divergence between the Bank of Japan and other main central banks. More recently, the gradually unwinding of this ultra-loose policy has given some support to the Yen.
Over the last decade, the BoJ’s stance of sticking to ultra-loose monetary policy has led to a widening policy divergence with other central banks, particularly with the US Federal Reserve. This supported a widening of the differential between the 10-year US and Japanese bonds, which favored the US Dollar against the Japanese Yen. The BoJ decision in 2024 to gradually abandon the ultra-loose policy, coupled with interest-rate cuts in other major central banks, is narrowing this differential.
The Japanese Yen is often seen as a safe-haven investment. This means that in times of market stress, investors are more likely to put their money in the Japanese currency due to its supposed reliability and stability. Turbulent times are likely to strengthen the Yen’s value against other currencies seen as more risky to invest in.
