The Japanese Yen is getting less and less interesting to investors as long as the external background remains pretty calm. The Yen has been retreating against the USD since March 23rd and there are no signals so far that the situation might change in the nearest future. The current quote for the instrument is 111.68.
In the morning, Japan reported on the Household Spending, which added 1.7% y/y in February, after expanding by 2.0% y/y in the previous month and against market expectations of +1.9% y/y. The weak reading is a good signal describing the entire consumer sector in the country. Apart from other things, this is some kind of a leading index of economic activity. It turns out that the population once again saves money without investing and spending it, because people are aware of complicated external market situation. For the Yen, it should be a very negative factor, but the Japanese currency often ignores the statistics.
The Average Cash Earnings lost 0.8% y/y in February against the expected reading of +0.9% y/y. More to that, the January statistics were revised downwards, from +1.2% y/y to -0.6% y/y, which means that the indicator has been falling for the second month in a row and that’s also very negative.
At the same time, the Leading Indicators increased up to 97.4 points in February after being 96.5 points the month before.