It is no secret that one of the primary drivers of relentless S&P 500 levitation over the past two years, ever since the start of Japan’s mammoth QE, has been the use of the Yen as the carry currency of choice (once again as during the credit bubble of the early-2000s), whose shorting has directly resulted in E-mini levitation. One look at the intraday chart of any JPY pair and the S&P500 is largely sufficient to confirm this. Those days, however, may be coming to an end, at least according to Goldman which overnight released a note saying that the Yen is “Almost at breakeven: Further yen depreciation could be a net burden.”
Here are the highlights:
The yen has depreciated quickly beyond ¥115/US$ from the ¥107/US$ level since the FOMC made the decision to terminate quantitative easing and the BOJ surprised with additional easing at the end of October. This has prompted concern over possible damage to Japan as a whole if the yen weakens further.
Using industry input/output tables to investigate the costs and benefits of a weak yen, we find that the manufacturing sector still reaps forex translation gains under Japan’s current economic structure. However, in materials and nonmanufacturing industries that have limited opportunity to pass on forex-driven cost growth to exports, the costs of a weak yen far outweigh the benefits. According to our calculations, a 25% decline in the yen’s valueresults in a ¥4.1 tn net cost increase for Japanese industry as a whole since 2012 and a ¥10.5 bn increase in household sector import inducement.
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