The US Dollar Is Gaining Ground Over The Japanese Yen
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On the 9th April the exchange rate was up to an impressive 100.241 yen to the US dollar. But things were very different just a month or so before, as we are about to see. The events of recent days have enabled the US dollar to get a nose significantly ahead of the yen, so that it becomes the stronger of the two currencies. As you will see if you punch the relevant figures into a currency converter, things are looking better now for the US dollar than they did a short while ago.
The US dollar kicked off the month of March by claiming 97.461 yen to the dollar. Not too bad, but still a way off from the 100.00 mark that it would eventually claim by a third of the way through April.
Things started to improve just two days later however, as the exchange rate bucked up to 98.010. Would it hit that 100.00 mark sooner than we thought it would?
Well it certainly got pretty close to doing just that. Another two days passed and by the end of the 5th March the exchange rate stood at 99.330. But that was as far as it would get for a while, as the dollar was in for a tougher time over the next few days.
The US dollar lost a total of 2.53 yen over the next twenty four hours, leaving it marginally further away from the one hundred yen mark, on 96.800. But we had the weekend to consider what would happen next, since that slump was hit on a Friday.
The US dollar obviously had enough in the bag to counter that drop, because by the time we were done with Monday’s trading we were back up to 99.005. That was a strong start to the week – but would it continue?
The answer was no, since things slipped back to 98.138 the following day and slid back even further until the low point of 97.246 was reached on Thursday. A slight improvement was gained before the weekend kicked in again, but it wasn’t enough to finish the week better than it had started.
One of the most remarkable drops occurred after a figure of 98.980 was reached on the 17th March. The following day saw a dip back to 98.202, but after that the 19th saw a plummet down to 94.850. That equates to a loss of 3.352 in just a day’s worth of trading – and it didn’t look like a very good month for the dollar as far as the yen was concerned.
But that was when the climb started to happen. The week ended on 95.852, and even though the US dollar managed to bag a couple of figures in the 98.0 region during the following week, the closing figure was 97.713. That was still a lot better than the week before, but there was still more good news to come.
As March gave way to April, the figures in the 97.0 and 98.0 region gave way to those in the 99.0s. The 2nd April saw a figure of 99.671, and we were closer still to the 100.00 mark the very next day, as the week drew to a close. That was when we managed to bag 99.873 yen to the US dollar.
And finally the week beginning the 6th April got us what we wanted. An exchange rate of 100.785 was achieved, and while that fluctuated slightly as you would expect over the next few trading days, it stayed above 100.00.
So where will the dollar and the yen go to from here? Will we see the US dollar manage to stay above that level and claim a successful onslaught against the yen? Of course things can and do change quite frequently, but the US will certainly be hoping that the figure can stay above the level they tried so hard to achieve for so long.
So keep an eye on those exchange rates to see whether the news coming out of both America and Japan influences it in the way the US would like. Anything could happen from here on in, and it probably will.
