On October 22, after falling to a new 32-year low, the yen rose as much as 2.7% to 146.23 against the dollar, the largest gain since March 2020.
Nikkei said the Japanese authorities once again intervened to support the yen. “It looks like there’s been a massive and sustained dollar sell-off that far exceeds recent attempts to contain the yen’s losses,” said Shaun Osborne, chief currency strategist at Scotiabank.
The yen started to soar around 10:30 GMT on Friday, when Japanese markets were long closed. In the next two hours, about $25 billion worth of yen futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest single-day volume since 2016.
Alex Etra, senior strategist at Exante Data Inc, said officials had not officially confirmed the intervention, but it felt like they did. It believes that government intervention will not prevent the yen from falling further.
