You’re going to hear a lot about “yen carry trade” today.
Betashares’ David Bassanese spoke to the ABC’s Radio National this morning where he explained it very succinctly.
He started off by explaining “the other big thing” besides the fears of US recession that could be worrying investors.
“The Bank of Japan raised interest rates last week, at the same time as people are talking about the US central bank going to start cutting interest rates,” he said.
“And that’s put upward pressure on the Japanese yen, and a lot of investors around the world borrow yen to buy other things, like US tech companies, US Japanese stocks.
“And so I think the severity of the sell-off in the past couple of days, it tells me that it’s not just fear of US recession. It’s really just an unwinding of what’s called the yen carry trade.
“The Yen has gone up, and people have had to sell out of that position, and as a result, sell everything they’ve bought with that borrowed money, which is including tech companies.
“So it’s that unwinding of that yen carry trade, which is, I think, triggering the severity of the sell offs in the past couple of days.”