Yen Grows on Stocks Slump and Bad Reports

Japanese yenThe Japanese yen continued to advance today against the dollar, the euro and the British pound as the the other major currency pair are stuck in the neutral zone before the ECB rate announcement.

The yen gained for the three out of four days of the current week as the stock markets declined in all the world’s regions and fell sharply in Asia today. The bad macroeconomic reports from U.S. and Europe and the yesterday’s late reports on the Japanese machine orders forced traders to sell the risky assets and turn to their favorite safe haven currency — the Japanese yen.

While other currencies are vulnerable to their central banks’ decisions and the negative reports on the important fundamental indicators, the yen can boast the ability to gain when everyone is losing, even the domestic stock market. Nikkei benchmark index lost 4.92 percent today after November machine orders fell by 16.2 percent.

USD/JPY fell from 88.91 to 88.63 as of 9:30 GMT today. EUR/JPY declined only slightly — from 117.01 to 117.00, while GBP/JPY went down from 129.66 to 129.58 today.