The Japanese yen strengthened past 113 per US dollar on Friday, benefitting from risk-off trades in the financial markets driven by fears around the Omicron variant and a firm hawkish pivot by the Federal Reserve. Investors positioned cautiously ahead of the weekend by selling growth stocks and risk-sensitive currencies in favor of defensive stocks, bonds and safe haven assets such as the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. Moreover, Bank of Japan board member Hitoshi Suzuki said on Thursday that the central bank will soon discuss ending the pandemic-relief funding programs in March. Meanwhile, the yen is still under pressure from growing policy divergence between the US and Japan, with a growing number of Fed officials having thrown their support behind normalizing policies and setting the stage for hiking rates to combat inflation. The BOJ on the other hand remained firm in its commitment to retain easy monetary policies to achieve its 2% price stability target.
Historically, the Japanese Yen reached an all time high of 358.44 in January of 1971. Japanese Yen - data, forecasts, historical chart - was last updated on December of 2021.
The Japanese Yen is expected to trade at 113.68 by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. Looking forward, we estimate it to trade at 115.08 in 12 months time.