The yen fell by the most since 1995 against its developed-nation counterparts as the Bank of Japan added economic stimulus and signs the eurozone debt crisis was abating damped safety demand.
The 17-nation euro strengthened against the US dollar and the yen during the last quarter after regional leaders agreed on a second bailout for Greece, spurring optimism that the region was recovering from its financial crisis.
“The main driving force behind the yen was the Bank of Japan embarking on a much easier monetary policy,” said Carl Forcheski, a director on the corporate currency sales desk at Societe Generale SA in New York. “The US labor market has performed a bit better than a lot of people were expecting and some of the data we’ve seen lately has given us a little bit of optimism.”
The yen dropped 10.4 percent over the past three months against the currencies of nine developed-nations, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes, in the biggest drop since the third quarter of 1995.
The Japanese currency lost 7.8 percent against the US dollar to ¥82.87 and weakened 10.9 percent to ¥110.56 per euro in New York.
Futures traders added to bets last week that the yen would decline against the US dollar, figures from the Washington-based Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed. The difference in the number of wagers by hedge funds and other large speculators on a decline in the yen compared with those on a gain — so-called net shorts — was 67,622 on Tuesday, compared with net shorts of 25,821 a week earlier.
Mexico’s peso rose the most against the dollar among the 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, adding 8.1 percent to 12.8107 per US dollar. The currency benefited from a stronger economy in the US, its largest trading partner and from higher oil prices. Crude is Mexico’s largest export.
The pound strengthened 0.8 percent this week to US$1.5991 after rising to US$1.6037, the highest level since Nov. 14 last year. The currency stayed above its 200-day moving average of US$1.5851. The UK currency gained 0.3 percent over the five days to £0.83.35 per euro.
Sterling has risen 1.4 percent over the past month, the best performer of the 10 developed-nation currencies tracked by Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts