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Yen intervention jolts currency markets as global stocks near records
The joint action helped the dollar versus the yen fall from about 164 to as low as 155, while the S&P 500 pushed to an intraday record early Tuesday.
Japan and the US coordinated a rare yen intervention, ending a historic slide in the currency, but global equities have kept pressing toward record levels, according to Yahoo Finance.
The dollar versus the yen fell sharply after the Thursday action and a US coordinated step on Friday, with the exchange rate dropping from nearly 164 to as low as 155. The intervention was the first joint currency intervention since 2011, and the first time the US has strengthened the yen since 1998, as Japan had kept rates near zero for decades while other countries moved higher.
The narrowing interest-rate gap has also reduced pressure on the yen, though the US 10-year still yields about 1.8 percentage points more than Japan’s, a spread that has roughly halved since early 2025. On Monday, the currency shock reached Japanese companies, with shares of Toyota, Sony, Honda, and several Japanese banks falling as of the US close.
While the yen move rattled parts of Japan’s equity market, Yahoo Finance said the S&P 500 rose for three straight sessions into Monday’s close and hit an intraday record early Tuesday, its first in two months. The 30-year Treasury yield surged to its highest level since 2007 on Friday before retreating, leaving bonds as the clearest warning even as risk assets set the overall tone.
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