Yen weaker ahead of Tankan survey

Yen weaker ahead of Tankan survey

Story link: Yen weaker ahead of Tankan survey

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The Japanese yen was weaker Tuesday as equities markets recovered from Monday’s big declines, making investors a little more willing to seek out risky currency deals, often financed with the low-yielding yen.

Also hurting the yen’s value was anticipation of the Bank of Japan’s quarterly Tankan survey, which is expected to show that Japanese business confidence fell significantly in the first quarter of the year.

At just after 11 a.m. in New York, the yen traded at ¥98.805 to the US dollar while it was at ¥131.0585 to the euro, at ¥68.5622 to the Australian dollar and at ¥56.4429 to the New Zealand dollar.

The pound was up versus the greenback and took back some of its declines to the euro after a report from market researcher GfK NOP showed that consumer confidence rose from minus 35 in February to minus 30 in March.

In late morning trade in New York, the pound traded at 92.52p to the euro while it cost $1.4337 to buy a pound.

The dollar also lost ground to the Chilean peso, which was helped by a government sale of $3 billion worth of the currency.

With the interest rate in Chile at 2.25 percent, the lowest it has been in over 4 years, the South American nation’s currency traded at 582.65 pesos to the US dollar.

The Chilean peso has gained 9.8 percent on the greenback this quarter, the best performance by any currency in relation to the dollar.