The Iran nuclear deal helped alleviate some uncertainty in financial markets, bolstering risk-on action and pushing down the safe-haven Japanese yen exchange traded fund, with the currency depreciating to a six-month low against the U.S. dollar.
The CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (NYSEArca: FXY) dipped 0.4% Monday. FXY is down 2.7% over the past three months and down 14.7% year-to-date.
The Japanese yen depreciated to 101.74 per U.S. dollar Monday.
The nuclear deal “is helping dollar-yen and helping risk,” Vassili Serebriakov, a foreign-exchange strategist at BNP Paribas SA, said in a Bloomberg article.
The yen currency also hit a four-year low against the euro earlier this week as Japan finally moves out from deflationary pressure.
Economists expect to see the country’s inflation increase 0.9% in October year-over-year. Mitsuhiro Furusawa, vice minister of finance for international affairs, said that deflation is coming to an end and the country’s economy is recovering.
The Bank of Japan has set an inflation target of 2% in two years. Governor Haruhiko Kuroda expects the target will be achieved sometime late in 2014 or early 2015. [Next Year Could be a 2013 Sequel for Japan ETFs]
“This week, we will probably see another tick up in the CPI data out of Japan,” Steven Saywell, global head of foreign-exchange strategy at BNP Paribas SA in London, said in the article.
As the yen continues to weaken and the Japanese economy expands, investors can take a look at yen currency-hedged Japan equity ETFs, like the WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund (NYSEArca: DXJ) and db X-trackers MSCI Japan Hedged Equity Fund (NYSEArca: DBJP), which have gained 36.7% year-to-date and 44.0% year-to-date, respectively. In comparison, the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (NYSEArca: EWJ), a non-currency hedged ETF, rose 25.3% year-to-date. [Good News for Japan ETFs: Goldman’s Still Bullish]
CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust
For more information on Japan, visit our Japan category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.