The Japanese yen grew 2% against the US dollar on Thursday as the market was jolted by the fresh inflation data released by the US. According to the sources, it was yen’s biggest rise since 2022 as yen traded at 158.55 against US dollar roughly at 3pm London time after trading nearer to 161.52 earlier this season.

Kit Jukes, global head of foreign exchange strategy telling the experts via an email “driver of the yen is big shorts and a surprise in CPI.” Shorting involves betting that the price of an asset will fall. This comes at a time when the traders in the market expect more intervention from the Japanese government to prop up its ailing currency.

Global Strategist and Chief Economist at ADM Investor Marc Ostwald quoted “there was no concrete evidence for the intervention but added that it looked like the broad dollar sell-off “triggered by U.S. CPI hit some stop loss target levels above all in JPY, with a strong suspicion that the MOF [Ministry of Finance] may well have used the opportunity to intervene modestly.” If an asset hits a defined price then it is triggers stop losses in the market.

Masato Kanda the Vice minister of Finance in International affairs in a statement issued to Jiji press quoted “that he was in a no position to comment on any possible intervention.” No official of the finance ministry was immediately available for comment. Shunichi Suzuki, the Japanese Finance Minister has backed the need for interventions if the sharp currency moves start to impact the households and companies. Last intervention was done in October 2022 by the Japanese Finance Ministry to stabilize its currency when the yen fell to a record low of 152 per US Dollar. Three interventions were done by the authorities that year to stabilize the currency and a total of 9.2 trillion yen was spent on it.