JPY 01 (May 08 - Oct 11)

[winston]

A few months ago, one of the Japanese ministers was saying that China has a hand in the rise of the JPY and has an ulterior motive ..

China Sells Japanese Debt After Yen, Benchmark Bonds Declined
By Yoshiaki Nohara and Shigeki Nozawa

China sold a net 177.3 billion yen ($2.15 billion) of Japanese bonds in December, capping the biggest yearly decrease since at least 2005, after the yen and benchmark government debt fell in November.

China sold a net 243.5 billion yen in short-term Japanese debt and bought 66.1 billion yen in long-term bonds, Japan’s Ministry of Finance said in a statement today. That resulted in net sales of 467.7 billion yen in 2010.

“As upward pressure on the yen has taken a pause, it seems China sold short-term notes to take profit,” said Tetsuya Inoue, chief researcher for financial markets at Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo, a unit of Japan’s largest brokerage.

“On the other hand, China probably wants to have some yen- denominated assets in the long-term, since Japan is a big trading partner.”

The yen dropped 3.9 percent in November against the dollar, the first decline since April. Yields on 10-year Japanese government debt climbed 26.5 basis points, or 0.265 percentage point, in November, the biggest surge since April 2008.

Japan’s currency has fallen 1.6 percent over the past three months against the Group of 10 developed-nation currencies, Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes show. The dollar is down 0.1 percent, while the euro slid 2.8 percent.

The yen traded at 82.29 per dollar as of 9:28 a.m. in Tokyo. The yen touched 80.22 per dollar on Nov. 1, the highest since April 1995


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-0 ... lined.html

[winston]

JPY @ 82.12.

When will it hit the Nikkei ? Or is the current drop in the Nikkei because of the strong JPY ?

[winston]

JPY @ 81.71

My chance to buy the Nikkei is slowly coming.

When the opportunity came the last time, I was scard stiff and the opportunity then flew away

[kennynah]

i think if usd/jpy can get to 82....can consider to buy it....

this tsunami may have caused some destruction.. it will be lauded later on as a successful tsunami operations ... and that the damage was minimized as the result of their preparedness..

BUY JPY at ~82

[winston]

The early impression is that Japan will be able to survive this episode despite the sensational pictures you see on CNN

The JPY is expected to weaken, which would be good for the exporters and the Nikkei later on.

Japanese interest rates could spike up a bit if the rebuilding efforts gets too costly.

Anyway, I'm watching the JPY not to speculate on it but to decide on when to buy the Japan ETF.

[winston]

JPY @ 79.14. The exporters will certainly be hurt...

This is causing Japanese Futures to dropped 5% now.

There could be some intervention. EU is also now talking about buying Japanese debts.

Do I know why I'm selling or buying ?

[winston]

How strong can it get ?

Range Low is 76.25 ...

Will the injection of JPY5t into the system able to stem the rise in the JPY ?

[winston]

Strong yen days bound to be numbered
Monday, March 21, 2011

Last week, the yen soared to a post-war high of 76.25 to the US dollar. This reminded us of how the yen surged more than 20 percent after the 1995 Kobe earthquake.

But the current situation is quite different from that then. So, whether the yen will
continue rising depends on many factors.

The yen surged last Thursday around 5am Hong Kong time. This is not a busy time of the day as New York has just closed and Asia is about to start up. At this time, most dealers are out of the market, creating what is referred to as a "vacuum period."

According to the trading records of the day, when the dollar plunged to 76.25 against the yen, the trading volume was very low.

Some say the plunge was not the work of institutional investors.

But I have my reservations. Which country's retail investors would conduct forex deals at 5am Hong Kong time? Usually, in a "vacuum-period" only a handful of institutional investors remain active.

Institutional investors know it wouldn't require a large number of transactions to significantly push up the yen to its 1995 level.

In fact, the upward surge of the yen versus the greenback started in 2007 and so far the Japanese currency is up almost 40 percent.

It is only a matter of time before institutional investors stop betting on the yen's strength and close their position.

http://thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.a ... 10321&fc=1

[winston]

JPY @ 80.91

Still strong but not as bad as the 76.25 number.

Looks like the Hedge Funds were front-running the Japanese insurance companies as the Japanese insurance companies have not started to bring money home to pay their claims.

And the Nikkei is brushing aside the high Yen and it's impact on the exporters...

[winston]

Is US$6.5b adequate ? And how much bullets do they really have ?

G7 yen-selling intervention estimated at $6.5 billion

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Group of Seven (G7) countries may have sold a total of around 530 billion yen ($6.5 billion) on Friday as they intervened in forex markets to weaken the currency, data from the Bank of Japan showed on Tuesday.

The amount is far smaller than market talk that they could have sold around 2 trillion yen, though some analysts said the figure was not a surprise.

Any yen the BOJ and other central banks sold for dollars would be paid into banks on Wednesday as currency trades are settled two business days after transactions and the country's markets were closed for a holiday on Monday.

The BOJ's projection for Wednesday's money markets showed there would be 830 billion yen in payments to banks from the public sector. That is 530 billion yen more than the about 300 billion yen of payments from the government that money brokers had been expecting ahead of intervention.

Market players say the difference between their expectations and the projection is likely to indicate how much yen G7 central banks sold on Friday, although money broker estimates are ballpark figures with a margin for error.

The G7 countries intervened jointly to stem the yen's strength on Friday -- their first coordinated currency intervention in more than a decade -- after the yen soared to a record high of 76.25 yen per dollar.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Canada and European Central Bank, each separately confirmed they intervened to keep the yen's value from climbing, though the BOJ's intervention was thought to be by far the largest.

Friday's intervention marked the first time Japan had intervened since September 15, when it sold 2.12 trillion yen, a record daily amount.

The Ministry of Finance will announce on March 31 how much it spent on currency market intervention in March.


Source: Reuters US Online Report Top News