Yen briefly hits ¥150 per dollar

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:48 JST, October 20, 2022

The yen briefly weakened to the ¥150 per dollar level on the Tokyo foreign exchange market on Thursday. This was its weakest level in just over 32 years, since August 1990 in the bubble period. The yen has weakened by ¥35 since the beginning of the year, when it was around ¥115 to the dollar.

While the U.S. has been rapidly raising interest rates in an effort to curb inflation, the Bank of Japan is keeping interest rates low through large-scale monetary easing, and there is a strong trend to buy dollars, which is advantageous for asset management, and to sell yen.

The government and the Bank of Japan intervened in the currency market on Sept. 22 for the first time in about 24 years by buying yen, but the trend of yen depreciation appears to remain unstoppable.