From our other sites
The story
In the New York foreign exchange market on the 23rd, the yen briefly plunged to the low-158 range against the dollar, slipping back to the level seen before the Bank of Japan’s “rate check” on September 18. A rate check is not an intervention itself, but simply an action to confirm exchange rate levels with market participants. At the same time, US long-term interest rates topped 5.10% for the first time in about 19 years, and the widening Japan-US interest rate gap appears to have accelerated yen selling. On 5ch threads, a range of opinions were exchanged over the high level of US interest rates, the effectiveness of currency intervention, and the impact of rising prices on daily life.
[New York — Hirofumi Takeuchi] In the New York foreign exchange market on the 23rd, the yen briefly weakened to the low-158 range against the dollar. This marked a return to the level seen before the Bank of Japan’s “rate check” — in which it queries market participants about exchange rate levels — conducted on the morning of the 18th, US Eastern time. US long-term interest rates topped 5.10% for the first time in about 19 years.
The yen was trading at around 158.40 to the dollar at about 1pm US Eastern time (2am Japan time on the 24th), its weakest level in roughly three weeks…(continues in the paid edition, 1,165 characters remaining)
Nikkei — updated September 24, 2026, 5:58am
Source: nikkei.com / Original article here
What people said
Fair point.
Rates like a developing country.
Somebody needs to sort this out already.
What happens if rates go up too much?
Intervention just buys time.
If you don't use that time to take real action,
you've just burned money for nothing.
And Japan did nothing even during that brief spell when the yen strengthened.
Zero intention of curbing inflation.
What happens when inflation hits? Do jobs disappear?
Your job's the one that'll disappear.
Hey, Watanabe!
Get to the office already!
The long weekend's over! ("Watanabe" is 5ch slang for Japan's famously active retail FX day-traders, nicknamed "Mrs. Watanabe")
Until then I just want to sit back and enjoy the ride.
This has shades of the Swiss franc shock (the 2015 crash after Switzerland's central bank abruptly abandoned its franc cap).
If the Ministry of Finance ever says "We're done defending 165, we'll leave it to the market,"
it'll shoot straight to 170.
Call it the yen shock, I guess.
The yen will eventually be worthless paper.
What's happening now is just buying time until then.
Money itself doesn't hold value.
Money is just a ticket that lets you take part in dividing up what we produce.
Money only turns into worthless paper once we stop producing anything.
Aren't there plenty of tax revenues to cover it?
Well, they didn't take the next step during that brief spell when the yen strengthened, did they?
Everyone already knew intervention alone wasn't going to fix it.
Just look at how much money is flowing out to the US now.
Can't be helped, the Japanese market was closed for 5 days.
Lately there's been nothing to trade but US stocks lol
Compared to FX, a standard taxable brokerage account, or corporate trading, NISA is basically garbage.
Unless they remove the structural advantage of switching into foreign-currency assets,
just cutting off NISA as an escape route only ends up hurting individual investors.
Bull Theory
@BullTheoryio
Translated from English
🚨 Massive crash hitting the markets.
After Iran's president said the country would "never surrender," nearly $1 trillion was wiped out across US stocks, metals, and crypto in the past hour.
The S&P 500 fell -0.6%, wiping out $414 billion.
Gold fell -0.8%, wiping out $242 billion.
Silver fell -1.5%, wiping out $55 billion.
Bitcoin fell -2.2%, wiping out $40 billion.
The Nasdaq fell -1.1%, wiping out roughly $149 billion.
Markets are now starting to price in a prolonged US-Iran conflict, which would push oil prices higher and pile on more inflationary pressure.
Background and key points of this topic
A “rate check” is an action the Bank of Japan takes to confirm exchange rate levels with market participants ahead of a possible intervention — it is not an intervention itself. The core of this news is that yen weakness didn’t stop even after the September 18 rate check, and on the 23rd the yen slid all the way back down to the low-158 level seen before that check. Behind US long-term rates topping 5.10% for the first time in about 19 years lies persistently high US inflation and fading expectations of rate cuts. The wider the Japan-US interest rate gap grows, the easier it is to sell the yen — and the shared view on the thread was that intervention is just a way to buy time. At the same time, opinions were split over the effectiveness of intervention and the Bank of Japan’s stance on rate hikes — some argued concrete measures should have been taken during that bought-time window — as well as over differing views on whether wage gains actually feel real. Note that, for neutrality, this article excludes replies that weighed in on Bank of Japan personnel appointments or on specific administrations or political parties.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Forex] Yen plunges into the 158 range, back to pre-rate-check level as US long-term rates rise to 5.1%.”
Leave a Reply