USD / Japanese Yen

Japanese yen per US dollar. The yen is the world's premier carry trade funding currency — when it weakens, it signals global risk-on appetite and leveraged bets funded cheaply in Japan. The BOJ's decades of ultra-low rates created the largest yen carry trade in history. Its partial unwind in August 2024 (yen surging from 160 to 142 in weeks) triggered a global equity selloff, demonstrating how central the yen is to global financial stability.