Ever get that falling feeling?
Well, if you have then you understand what the Japanese yen's been going through the last few months, dropping about 20% of its value along the way.
With the G20 meeting the next two days in Moscow much of the foreign exchange attention will rivet on Japan and the yen.
Already the yen has captured headlines from hedge funds that have by all reports backed up their truck to haul their winnings away from shorting the yen. Perhaps the biggest investor was George Soros, famous for his previous shorting the UK pound
In 1992.
Given the Japanese government's alleged commitment to intervene if necessary to weaken one of the world's persistently strong currencies some are saying it was bound to happen. Others beg to differ.
One of those is economist Carl Weinberg. Weinberg heads High Frequency Economics, a well-known NewYork economic think tank and consulting firm.
Weinberg seems to think any real government intervention is just so much official "huffing and puffing," he noted in a recent interview. "We see no evidence of central bank intervention in the markets on behalf of governments."
Weinberg went on to say the G7 and G20 countries have to censure Japan by name otherwise they would "forfeit, forever, the option to censure China by name for currency manipulation." He predicted if the G20 don't call Japan out by name, shorting the yen again will be fair game, although he expected any sell-off to be limited.
The magic number for the yen, according to Weinberg, is around 94.20, a technical support level. The yen downturn that began in November should fizzle out there and then resume its appreciation, he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment