The Japanese yen is Japan's national currency, issued by the Bank of Japan and widely traded globally, often used as a funding currency for carry trades.
Koreans buying yen are paying the least in about 18 years, as 100 yen fell into the mid-800s of won this week from about 950 in early summer. Most of the drop is the won's chip-export rally against the dollar, Korea Times figures show, so the saving depends on that boom lasting.
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Polls put a 25 basis point move to 1.25% at 88% to 97%, and speculators have already flipped net long the yen. According to cryptobriefing.com, further strength now needs a BOJ surprise or a Fed cut.
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Koichi Sugisaki's team wants clients long dollar-yen from about 154 toward 163 with a stop at 150. That pays 2.25 for every 1 risked on a view that the yen's rally was mechanical positioning that has now flushed out.
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The case that the yen carry trade is unwinding rests on one named asset manager's report, relayed by Bloomberg, and on a single month of price action in a currency that has already given part of it back.
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A hawkish Bank of Japan board member and talk of GPIF repatriation moved the yen 3.2% in two days, but the 16 trillion to 17 trillion yen short book JPMorgan describes has not been forced to cover anything yet.
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Roughly $87 billion of yen buying, funded by a repo against Japan's own bond holdings, is being asked to steady a carry trade that estimates put between $500 billion and $4 trillion, and Yves Smith expects it to hold briefly.
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The reported figures imply Tokyo was buying yen at about 159.5 to the dollar, which now trades at 160.20, and the rate gap that produced the slide sits exactly where it did. That is what a record defence buys when you cannot set the other side's policy.
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Traders put a September BOJ hike at 80 to 90 percent, the yen sits four yen off its summer low of 164, and the US Treasury Secretary is telling Tokyo to let Abenomics end by itself rather than defend it.
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Dollar-funded carry gained 18% last year and kept climbing in January while emerging-market volatility stayed unusually low. The strategy's history is steady pay, then one bad week.
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Ministry of Finance flow data show a bid under global stocks and bonds funded by yen carry, and repriced in July by one minister's suggestion about GPIF.
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The won closed at 1,397.7 on the 19th, down 14.1 in a session, even as the U.S. 30-year yield hit its highest since 2007. Exporter flow, not rate differentials, set the price.
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The Bank of Japan held at 1% after raising from 0.75% in June. With 2.5% inflation projected against 0.6% growth, its own forecast says the tightening is not finished.
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The benchmark JGB yield is near 2.93%, a level last seen in September 1996, and up more than 70 basis points this year. Global funding assumptions built on cheap yen need rewriting.
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The first joint US-Japan yen intervention in three decades moved the rate about seven yen and handed much of it back, leaving the carry trade as the live risk.
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Leveraged funds cut net yen shorts from nearly 138,000 contracts to about 59,500 in roughly five weeks. The carry trade's risk premium has been re-priced by policy, not by rates.
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