News 2024-05-18 110

Japan Sells $72.1B in US Debt

On the last trading day of September, the financial markets in Japan and South Korea suddenly experienced violent fluctuations, seemingly in retaliation from the United States.

For a period prior to this, taking advantage of expectations before the US dollar's interest rate cut, the yen launched a counterattack.

The US dollar index approached the critical point of 100, while the yen continued to appreciate, even breaking through the 140 mark at one point.

If we were to look back half a year ago, the United States would have never anticipated such a fierce counterattack from Japan.

Recalling April of this year, the yen went through a rapid devaluation, at its worst even breaking below 160, forcing Japan to invest a large amount of funds for market intervention.

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It was from April that Japan stopped purchasing US Treasury bonds and began to sell them, not expecting that this wave of selling would not stop once it started, resulting in a four-consecutive sell-off.

According to the latest July data released, Japan's current holdings of US Treasury bonds are only $1,115.7 billion, with four consecutive months of selling leading to a net reduction of $72.1 billion.

In response, it is believed that US Treasury Secretary Yellen would be extremely disappointed and helpless.

Finally, the Federal Reserve Chairman made a strong statement, the next interest rate cut will definitely not be 50 basis points, and the remaining two meetings this year will at most reduce by 25 basis points each time.

This statement broke market expectations, causing the US dollar to rise in the opposite direction, while the Japanese stock market and the South Korean stock market both experienced significant declines.The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) fell by 2.11% on Monday of this week, but the Nikkei 225 Index in Japan was clearly hit harder, plummeting by 4.8%.

Will this blow cause Japan and South Korea to realign with the United States?

It's likely to be difficult.

South Korea faced a severe problem of negative export growth last year, but exports have significantly improved this year, which is why South Korea dared to express its intention to increase trade with China in front of a high-level U.S. delegation.

For Japan, in addition to continuing to sell off U.S. Treasury bonds, it is estimated that there will be another interest rate hike before the end of the year.

So far this year, Japan has carried out two interest rate hikes: the first was in March, when the negative interest rate was adjusted to zero; the second was in July, when it completely got rid of the zero interest rate.

Moreover, Japan quickly digested the unfavorable news. On Tuesday of this week, the Nikkei 225 Index rebounded slightly, rising by 1.9%, and the market's panic sentiment was greatly alleviated.

At present, although Japan is about to change its prime minister, the attitude of the central bank to raise interest rates again before the end of the year has not changed.

In this currency war against the U.S. dollar, Japan and South Korea inadvertently became our teammates.

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