Japanese yen leaps on Huawei arrest

On Thursday, the safe haven Japanese yen managed to surge versus the evergreen buck due to the fact that the detaining of a key Chinese executive in Canada might further worsen tensions between China and America, thus helping market participants to drift away from risky assets.

As a matter of fact, the currency pair USD/JPY dipped by 0.33% trading at 112.82 having dived to 112.58 overnight.

The CFO at Huawei, Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada. She’s supposed to have breached Iran sanctions. Canada had her detained following the US request.

In response, China criticized both Canada and America for the arrest. The Asian country demanded her immediate release.

The arrest took place less than a week after American leader Donald Trump and his Chinese rival Xi Jinping came to a 90-day trade truce. Therefore, the arrest might potentially rekindle the trade conflict between the world’s two leading economies.

Market sentiment had initially been spurred by the trade truce, although the mood rapidly worsened on skepticism that the two leading countries are capable of reaching a substantive compromise within the 90-day timeframe.

This week fears about an American economic deceleration have also impacted financial markets after an inversion in a part of the American Treasury yield curve generated fears about economic weakness. By the way, a flatter curve is traditionally considered to be a gauge of a decelerating economy.

On Tuesday, the 10-year Treasury yield went down to a three-month minimum of 2.885%.

By the way, Fed policymakers are anticipated to gather at a December 18-19 gathering, at which the major US financial institution is anticipated to have rates lifted. Market participants are eager to know how many rate lifts the Federal Reserve could carry out in 2019.

The common currency dived versus the greenback. EUR/USD lost 0.08% hitting 1.1334.