The yen halted a seven-day advance against the US dollar as Japanese Minister of Finance Taro Aso said the authorities stand ready to act if foreign exchange moves are excessive.
Japan’s currency fell against all its 16 major peers before central bankers and finance ministers from the G20 meet this week.
Japan will take “proper action” if moves are extreme, Aso said yesterday, adding that officials agreed at the bloc’s meeting in Shanghai that such moves are bad for economies.
Photo: EPA
The yen surged to the strongest in 17 months against the US dollar on Monday and Eisuke Sakakibara, a former Japanese Finance Ministry official, said that it might appreciate to 100 by year-end.
“The market is quite cautious about going too aggressively long on the yen,” said Vishnu Varathan, an economist at Mizuho Bank Ltd in Singapore. “The intervention risks are stepping up dramatically. Their basis for intervention has never been whether the currency is overvalued or undervalued. This is actually to smooth out volatility or take out speculative components.”
The yen weakened 0.3 percent to ¥108.22 per US dollar as of 6:12am in London after appreciating to ¥107.63 on Monday, the strongest since October 2014. The seven-day advance through Monday was the longest since September 2012. Japan’s currency fell 0.3 percent to ¥123.46 per euro.
Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Monday said that financial markets continue to be volatile and he is watching the effect on the economy.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has said on a daily basis the government is watching foreign exchange movements “with vigilance,” and would take appropriate action if necessary.
A technical indicator shows the US dollar is poised to rally. The greenback’s 14-day relative strength index versus the yen was 26.
That is the fifth day below the 30 level that indicates to some analysts it has fallen too far, too fast and is set to reverse direction.
“Given how the [US] dollar-yen has been falling for seven straight days, it looks oversold even from a technical point of view such as the RSI indicator,” said Atsushi Hirano, Tokyo-based head of foreign exchange sales Japan at RBS Securities Japan Ltd. “Still it could see some selling pressure at about the upper end of the 108 level from Japanese investors, so the rebound will be limited.”
Sakakibara, dubbed “Mr Yen” for his ability to influence the exchange rate in the 1990s, said Japan’s currency will strengthen beyond 105 per US dollar in the next few months.
The yen at 105 is “no problem” for the economy, Sakakibara, a professor at Tokyo’s Aoyama Gakuin University, on Monday said in a Bloomberg Television interview.
Any intervention can only be done with agreement from the US and other counter parties, he said.
The Australian dollar advanced for a third day as a survey from National Australia Bank Ltd showed a gauge of business conditions matched the strongest since before the 2008 global financial crisis.
The Australian dollar gained 0.5 percent to US$0.76 and New Zealand’s dollar climbed 0.4 percent to US$0.69.
“Risk aversion is receding,” said Junichi Ishikawa, a market analyst at IG Markets Ltd In Tokyo “The general rise in commodities markets is spurring buying back of commodities-linked currencies while weighing on the yen.”
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained