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The story
On the morning of September 8, the yen strengthened to ¥153 to the dollar on the foreign exchange market, its highest level in roughly half a year, since mid-February. Posts flooded 5ch’s Breaking News+ board within moments of the news, with optimists insisting “the yen is still plenty weak” clashing against replies warning that “a sudden 30-yen swing is bound to have consequences.” Other commenters explained the impact on people making regular investments through the new NISA tax-free investment program, while some pointed to seven straight months of real wage growth and 1.4% GDP growth as proof that “the economy has truly bounced back.” Opinion split widely over where the “appropriate” exchange rate actually lies.
Sep 8 (Tue) 8:37 AM JST
TV Asahi (ANN)
Breaking news.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
This is still yen-weak territory, no big deal.
Whose perspective is that supposed to be, lol
That's economically illiterate.
Do you even get what happens when the exchange rate suddenly swings by 30 yen?
Get lost, you ignorant beggar.
You'll find out eventually.
Lately stocks tend to move in tandem with the exchange rate — traders seem to stack currency gains on top of their stock trades.
So when the yen strengthens, stocks generally tend to fall. Conversely, a weak yen tends to push stocks up.
During the ultra-strong-yen era under the DPJ government, the rate hit ¥69 and the Nikkei crashed to around 7,000. Now it went as high as ¥160 and the Nikkei's at 65,000.
I can answer for investment trusts (index funds): just remember that a weaker yen boosts your valuation and a stronger yen lowers it, and that gets multiplied together with the growth of whatever you're invested in to give your final valuation.
For example, say the rate is ¥152, down 1% (yen strengthening) from the day before, while your holdings grew 1.5% — that day's valuation would be up 0.5%, an unrealized gain.
This gets recalculated every single day.
Something like that, anyway.
Kuro-chan can never get his predictions right, as usual (nickname, presumably for a well-known policymaker)
If it keeps going and drops to around ¥110, that'll be a massive profit.
That's a nice fat 6 trillion yen in profit from currency gains.
Well, since we're a declining nation, I think it'll drift back to a weak yen long-term, but this recent slide dropped way too far, way too fast.
>fair value in the ¥120s
Does Japan even have that kind of strength?
It basically comes down to total yen supply divided by total dollar supply.
By that measure, the yen is way overshooting into weak territory right now.
A rate hike being certain is a given at this point —
what people are actually watching now is how big the September hike will be.
People were already expecting that even before Bessent said anything.
"You guys" isn't one group, though — there's people who trade stocks and people who don't.
This isn't even a strong yen, though.
Well, it's a multi-decade investment, so it should be fine in theory — though probably not many people can keep calling it "a buying opportunity" the whole way down.
Plenty of people understand it logically but still won't be able to stomach it emotionally.
If it's only been a few years, your total contributions probably haven't even caught up yet.
Even if you started maxing out the new NISA at ¥100,000/month — ¥1.2 million/year.
Back when stocks recovered thanks to Abenomics,
people who'd "just held on the whole time and ended up in the black"
crawled up out of the woodwork like cicadas emerging from underground.
Turns out way more people than you'd expect were doing the "faint and forget" style of investing (i.e., buy and completely ignore your portfolio).
Same as with rice prices —
someone's steering this.
Actually, do you really think all those crappy companies that kept jacking up prices "because of the weak yen" will ever lower them again if we get back to ¥100 to the dollar?
Their whole "blame the import costs" excuse won't fly anymore.
No way in hell they will, lol
Well, rice prices have already dropped and convenience-store rice balls are starting to get cheaper.
NHK News
Real wages up for 7 straight months
GDP up 1.4%
S-strong…!
Japan's economy has made a full comeback, it's honestly hilarious.
Yeah, the case for a stronger-yen phase is genuinely pretty solid.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The yen had weakened to as low as ¥160 to the dollar earlier this year, but strong domestic data — seven straight months of real wage gains and 1.4% GDP growth — fueled rate-hike expectations and pulled the yen back up to the ¥153 level. In the thread, replies explaining the basic mechanic that “a weak yen means paper gains, a strong yen means paper losses” stood out amid discussion of the impact on people making regular new-NISA investment contributions, testing posters’ grasp of how closely stock prices and exchange rates now move together. At the same time, claims about the “appropriate” rate — such as “¥120 is right for ordinary people’s lives” or “the ¥120s reflect Japan’s real strength” — rested on inconsistent reasoning from poster to poster, mixing different yardsticks like purchasing power parity and capital flows without acknowledging the difference; readers should note there’s no single, objective “correct” exchange rate.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[Breaking] Yen Hits ¥153/Dollar, Strongest Level Since Mid-February This Year.”
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