The Yen slightly retreated. Overview for 01.03.2019

On Friday, USDJPY resumed growing; market players like the USD. 

The Japanese Yen is retreating against the USD at the end of the week. The current quote for the instrument is 111.67.

Investors’ attitude towards the American currency changed after the USA had reported on the GDP and they Yen got weaker. Apart from this, right now they don’t require “safe haven” assets. That’s why demand for them is reducing. 

On Friday morning, Japan published several reports and some of them continued yesterday’s tendency to confirm problems in the Japanese economy. For example, the Unemployment Rate went from being 2.4% in December 2018 to 2.5% in January 2019, although it wasn’t expected to change. It means that bad times with the Industrial Production, the Factory Orders, and the Export make people lose their jobs and become available on the unemployment market. The current situation is not critical, however, more and more factors appear confirming new problems in the Japanese economy and they shouldn’t be ignored. 

Another thing worth mentioning is decline of the Consumer Confidence. In January it was 41.9 points and in February it dropped down to 41.5 points. The indicator was expected to fall, but not this much. This is one more signal to the overall picture. 

Sooner or later, the Japanese government and Central Bank will have to respond to deteriorations in the country’s economy, which started early in 2019. One of the ways to change it is to use some other type of QE, but it is not very easy.