Japanese yen tumbles as oil price rises again

On the foreign exchange market on Monday, the Japanese yen is the most striking currency, with a sharp decline in response to the rising oil price again.

The yen rose sharply on Monday morning, with 0.64 percent to 130.67 yen for one euro. This continued an increase in the previous days. The yen is sometimes very sensitive to oil prices, because Japan is a net energy importer.

A higher oil price means that more yen is needed to buy energy and that depresses the price. In addition to the speculative movement, there is also a fundamental flow that causes the movement. Meanwhile, the British pound is heading higher against the euro. One euro is now less than £ 0.85. This has to do with increasing speculation about a possible interest rate increase by the Bank of England. The central bank is concerned that higher inflation expectations will become entrenched in society, which may feed into higher wage demands.

An interest rate increase should counter this, but will not help much, because inflation is not caused by strong demand, but by a faltering supply. The more expensive prices will quickly lead to less growth, so that a scenario of stagflation, i.e. stagnant growth at high inflation, seems more likely.

They did not see this inflation coming. Any interest rate increase to be short-lived and certainly not followed by a series of interest rate increases.

In the meantime, the euro/dollar has shown little movement since the publication of the US jobs report last Friday. Although this showed a much lower number of new jobs than predicted, this was compensated by positive factors, such as adjustments over the previous months and a better-than-expected unemployment rate, indicating a tighter labour market. Little influence on the expectation that the Federal Reserve will or will not throttle or  ‘tap’ the monetary stimulus. And therefore little impact on the exchange rate development of the euro/dollar.

The euro was $ 1.1562 and £ 0.8476.