The euro fell for the first time since May 7 against the U.S. dollar, while the Japanese yen rose against all other major currencies, as the European stock markets failed to demonstrate a commitment to move farther up.
The traders witnessed Europes stock market indexes mostly in the red zone and expected a negative opening from Wall Street when they began to sell the euro and other high-yielding currencies in order to buy the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen. The Eurozone currency corrected significantly after one of the highest daily gains demonstrated on Friday. The Japanese yen grew against all other popular currencies, except the South Korean won.
Analysts point out the consolidation of the recent weeks bullish trend in the stocks, commodities and other more risky than safe assets. While there is no strong confidence in the continuation of the growth, investors prefer to wait holding the «safe haven» currencies, such as Japanese yen, for example. But overall optimism for the growing markets isnt gone and the current correction should probably be regarded as that, a short- or medium-term correction.
EUR/USD fell from 1.3654 to 1.3579 as of 12:39 GMT today, while EUR/JPY slid down from 134.73 to 132.95; EUR/GBP rose insignificantly from 0.8963 to 0.8982. USD/JPY declined from 98.67 to 97.87 (touching as low as 97.58 earlier) and GBP/JPY declined from 150.28 to 147.30.
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