83% of the Forex market is made up of just seven currencies, with the Japanese yen being one of the biggest in terms of both international commerce and Forex trading. With one of the greatest GDPs among all countries, Japan has one of the biggest economies on earth and is also one of the biggest exporters in terms of dollars.
On the foreign exchange market, central banks support all of the major currencies. The Bank of Japan is responsible for managing the Japanese yen (BoJ). Similar to the majority of central banks in industrialized nations, the Bank of Japan is required to behave in a way that promotes growth and reduces inflation.
The world's oldest major economy, Japan also has one of the lowest fertility rates. That reflects an aging workforce with a decreasing number of young people to stimulate the economy through taxes and spending. As a result, Japan, which had previously been relatively opposed to immigration, has lately started opening its borders to foreign workers to help with labor shortages.
A highly educated workforce and a developed economy both characterize Japan. Although certain sectors, including shipbuilding, have moved to nations like South Korea and China, Japan is still a major producer of consumer electronics, automobiles, and technical companies. Japan now has a large economic exposure to the rest of the world.
To explain foreign currency rates, several ideas have been put forth. Since supply and demand, which takes a range of market psychology elements into account, determine exchange rates in the real market, these models do not perform very well in practice.
Forex rates and BoJ policy are both impacted by Japan's trade balance. In the past, Japan has had significant trade surpluses, but it also has a big public debt and an aging population. However, a sizable portion of that debt is held domestically, and Japanese investors are content with modest rates of return.
Despite its extremely high debt levels, traders like Japan's debt balance since it is perceived as more manageable. They have ran increasingly large deficits over the past ten years, which is unusual.