Housewives Outmaneuver UBS, Deutsche Bank Trading Yen

other examples have shown that when the broader public is entering a market that the end is near..... but with the Bank Of Japan in power......

andere beispiele haben gezeigt das wenn die breite masse etwas für sich entdeckt das dort eher das ende naht.......aber mit unterstützung der Bank Of Japan......

Japanese businessmen, housewives and pensioners betting against the yen in their spare time are wrecking the forecasts of the world's biggest currency traders.

The yen has slumped 4.6 percent to a 4 1/2-year low against the dollar this quarter, making it the worst performer among 72 major currencies and confounding predictions by strategists at Deutsche Bank AG and UBS AG for gains of about 1 percent.

The banks didn't reckon on the risk appetite of Japanese individuals, who are borrowing money like never before to buy currencies with higher yields. They tripled their trading in the year ended March to a record $11 billion a day, according to Tokyo-based Yano Research Institute Ltd., publisher of an annual report on the business. Globally, currency trading by retail investors rose 54 percent in 2006, according to research firm Greenwich Associates in Greenwich, Connecticut.

``Japan's interest rates are too low,'' said Hiroshi Ono, a 40-year-old sales clerk at a telephone company in Tokyo. Ono said he has made about $17,000 since March by borrowing $200,000 of yen and buying U.S. dollars to take advantage of the 4.75 percentage-point difference between Japanese and U.S. interest rates.
Japanese investors are borrowing yen at the central bank's 0.5 percent overnight lending rate and buying higher-yielding currencies in New Zealand, the U.K., Australia and even Brazil to increase returns on 1,536 trillion yen ($12.5 trillion) in savings. The strategy is called the carry trade.

Global trading by investors other than banks, fund managers and companies surged 54 percent last year, said Peter D'Amario, a consultant at Greenwich Associates. The category, which includes retail investors, accounted for 16 percent of trades handled by 1,700 firms surveyed, up from 10 percent a year earlier. It grew 80 percent in Europe, 55 percent in Asia Pacific and 30 percent in the Americas.

In Japan, individuals have opened 600,000 so-called margin trading accounts at brokerages that lend money for currency bets, 80 percent more than a year ago, according to Yano Research

Deposits in margin trading brokerages have risen 60 percent to $4.9 billion in the past year, Yano Research found. While that's about 2 percent of the $272 billion that Japanese individuals have put into mutual funds that invest overseas, borrowing typically makes their positions 10 to 30 times larger