I picked Japanese yet, because I believe Yen due its utility in the carry trade. A “carry trade” consists of borrowing a currency with a low interest rate, exchanging this money into another currency, and investing exchanged money in higher yielding and higher risk investments. These investments can include but are not limited to emerging markets, US-based stocks, and Japanese stocks. In turn, investors are essentially getting paid money when they choose to invest in a depreciating currency.

In the years leading up to 2007, the yen carry trade strategy was quite popular among Forex investors. Specifically, investors borrowed the Japanese yen at extremely low interest rates in Japan. They then used this money to invest in currencies backed by higher interest rates – such as the New Zealand and Australian dollars.

Within the past year, the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, made announcements regarding pragmatic inflation and boosting Japan ’s overall economy. In turn, hedge fund managers and other investors viewed this situation as an opportunity to short the Yen and buy higher yielding investments. For a significant period of time, investors made a significant amount of money on this type of trade.

However, more recently, the Bank of Japan adopted an aggressive monetary stimulus plan and this situation in turn, resulted in the appreciation of the Yen. My prediction is that as the Yen appreciates in value, the desirability of the Yen to be utilized in a carry trade also naturally decreases.

Also, I think Yen is interesting right now because in the contexts of the forex word, USD/JPY has been the most aggressively traded currencies pair where over the last 6 months we have seen the most volatility. The swing in prices were anywhere from 76 Yen to Dollar to over 100. I think it’s because of the expansion of Japanese economy due to the change in its monetary policy and it caused Yen to get a little bit stronger against US dollar again as US dollar dropped over 9% against Yen.

However, my prediction the expansion of Japanese economy is over in its first year and in order for Japan to increase its exports Japan needs to lower the value of the Yen or make Yen weaker. As the result, we might see currency war in Japanese Yen. Also, as soon as US dollar will get higher the carry trade will be the king of the market again. As the result, that will push US dollar higher than Yen and Yen will go lower. There is a strong possibility for US dollar is to be over 100 against the Yen in the near future, but for now it is reasonable to expect continuous volatility in USD/JPY.

Thank you for reading!