Investment Implications of the Japanese Yen Going Godzilla (FXY)

The Japanese yen (JPY) recently made a post-World War II high against the U.S. dollar (USD) and some speculators believe the yen is about to go Godzilla in the currency world because too few traders believe this yen move has legs and is for real. "The yen just made an all-time high and tell me where the bulls are. There aren't any bulls and because there aren't any bulls we're going much higher. There's going to be a short-squeeze that is going to make the yen go absolutely ballistic," a U.S. currency trader told Benzinga early Wednesday. The trader said he had started taking positions in ProShares Ultra Yen (NYSE: YCL) late Tuesday and would be looking to add to his positions in the coming days. If the markets, and especially commodities, start moving down, then the trader said we should see the yen quickly climb to new highs on forced buying. One of the main reasons given for the upside movement of the yen remains risk appetite, according to the trader, which encourages investors to buy higher-yielding currencies against the Japanese yen. The YCL fund is a leveraged ETF that is 2x bullish the yen, meaning that YCL seeks twice (200%) the daily performance of the U.S. dollar price of the Japanese yen. YCL's bearish counterpart is ProShares UltraShort Yen (NYSE: YCS). Investors also wanting to go long the Japanese yen but without the leverage have a few ETFs to choose from: CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (NYSE: FXY); iPath JPY/USD Exchange Rate ETN (NYSE: JYN); and WisdomTree Dreyfus Japanese Yen (JYF). At last check, the one-year performance of the USD/JPY currency pair is -13%.