The U.S. dollar dropped to its lowest level since June 14 versus the Japanese yen on Friday after the rising geopolitical tension surrounding the Korean Strait made investors look for safe haven assets.
Not only the yen but also the Swiss franc edged higher against the greenback this week following the comments of U.S. President Donald Trump to North Korea saying that any threat presented to his country would be “met with fire and fury”. Hours after his comments, the hermit state said it is carefully examining a plan to hit the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam
Scotiabank’s chief currency strategist Shaun Osborne said the Japanese yen is really the big story and risk aversion is a problem to the markets. Yen and Swiss franc are frequently wanted in times of financial stress and political turmoil’s.
The U.S. dollar dropped to its eight-week low versus the Japanese yen at 109.11 yen amidst Asian trading earlier on Friday. There is another support level under the said level for the U.S. currency on technical charts at 108.13. This is a trough that the dollar reached last April.
Western Union Business Solutions’ chief currency strategist Steven Dooley said that they are getting close to the very significant support on the dollar/yen pair. He added that the 108.10/108.00 level in particular is needed to break below those levels. That would really set up a fast move to the negative territory. On the previous day, the dollar lost as much as 0.8 percent against the yen.