Hello everyone, this is Will Gomez, Currency Strategist with Market Traders Institute. I have been trading professionally for the company for about 4 years now, and to say the least, my life has changed magnificently. Currently I am living abroad in Japan, and as an expat and experiencing the direct impact of the flee to safety first hand.
As many of you have seen, after the results of the Brexit voting, many serious investors (both speculative and institutional level traders) have decided to flee to the relative safety of the JPY, causing massive appreciation, and thus a numerical/graphical depreciation of all the currencies traded against it. Despite the fact that Japan is a first-world country, it depends very heavily on trading. A whopping 40% of all foods eaten in Japan are actually imported. Japan's economy also gets a significant push from the massive tourism industry. As you can guess, the stronger the Yen, the less buying power foreigners have, and the less attractive a destination Japan becomes. As a general rule then, Japan does not like to maintain a very strong Yen, and the investment community is aware of this.
As a result, there is a very strong anticipation of depreciation of the Yen, but when is it coming? Prime Minister Abe and BoJ Governor Kuroda are certainly not men that are faint of heart. Looking back as recently as 2012, we can see on our charts extremely volatile moves as a result of the aggressive qualitative and quantitative easing (affectionately dubbed AbeNomics) measures, which caused the entire basket to soar to unprecedented highs. The real question is, can they pull it off again? It would seem as if the options are rather limited at this time, since they have already engaged in experimental tactics like negative interests rates, but then again? Prior to the Brexit, the BoJ was reluctant to do anything hasty, and the results for June fell short of expectations. However, given their track record I would say that they are certainly not afraid of doing what needs to be done to achieve their goal.
With with the Dow-Jones USDOLLAR Index at past support of a consolidation range and the Stochastic poised firmly in the overbought zone, it would seem that it may get worse before it gets better, but not by much since the USD/JPY is sitting firmly at it's support right around 101.10. The next round of stimulus will most likely be what makes the difference and I will be poised looking for the buy opportunity.
As many of you have seen, after the results of the Brexit voting, many serious investors (both speculative and institutional level traders) have decided to flee to the relative safety of the JPY, causing massive appreciation, and thus a numerical/graphical depreciation of all the currencies traded against it. Despite the fact that Japan is a first-world country, it depends very heavily on trading. A whopping 40% of all foods eaten in Japan are actually imported. Japan's economy also gets a significant push from the massive tourism industry. As you can guess, the stronger the Yen, the less buying power foreigners have, and the less attractive a destination Japan becomes. As a general rule then, Japan does not like to maintain a very strong Yen, and the investment community is aware of this.
As a result, there is a very strong anticipation of depreciation of the Yen, but when is it coming? Prime Minister Abe and BoJ Governor Kuroda are certainly not men that are faint of heart. Looking back as recently as 2012, we can see on our charts extremely volatile moves as a result of the aggressive qualitative and quantitative easing (affectionately dubbed AbeNomics) measures, which caused the entire basket to soar to unprecedented highs. The real question is, can they pull it off again? It would seem as if the options are rather limited at this time, since they have already engaged in experimental tactics like negative interests rates, but then again? Prior to the Brexit, the BoJ was reluctant to do anything hasty, and the results for June fell short of expectations. However, given their track record I would say that they are certainly not afraid of doing what needs to be done to achieve their goal.
With with the Dow-Jones USDOLLAR Index at past support of a consolidation range and the Stochastic poised firmly in the overbought zone, it would seem that it may get worse before it gets better, but not by much since the USD/JPY is sitting firmly at it's support right around 101.10. The next round of stimulus will most likely be what makes the difference and I will be poised looking for the buy opportunity.
