(Bloomberg) -- For Japan’s influential group of individual investors in the currency market, the latest suspected interventions to support the yen come as an ideal opportunity to load up on dollars.

The yen’s slide to beyond 155 per dollar Wednesday for the first time since last week suggests some of their investments have paid off. The Japanese currency weakened despite Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda warning on the same day that “a monetary policy response might be needed” to the exchange-rate moves considering their significant impact on the economy and inflation.

The volume of dollar buying for yen by individual investors reached 27.3% of total transactions as of May 3, the largest this year on Click 365’s exchange-traded FX margin market, according to Tokyo Financial Exchange Inc. data. The volume was especially heavy on April 29 and early on May 2 in Japan, when Japanese authorities are suspected to have conducted yen-buying interventions.

The fact that retail investors are using intervention as a chance to buy dollars cheap highlights the challenges Japanese officials face in trying to prevent a further tumble in the yen when a wide interest rate gap boosts the appeal of investing in US assets. And individuals in Japan are a significant force in the foreign-exchange market, accounting for nearly 30% of global currency trading by retail investors, according to a BOJ report.

Individual investors “felt that what they had been waiting for had finally arrived,” said Takuya Kanda, head of research at Gaitame.com Research Institute. After the interventions, “I have the impression that those who bought dollars at around 152 yen have done the best,” as the US currency has climbed from those levels, he said.

Japanese individual investors may not stay dollar buyers for long, however, because the scope to profit against the yen may be decreasing.     

Since authorities are suspected to have conducted the second recent intervention around the 157-yen level, “from the 155-yen level, investors will be looking for a place to sell, and as the yen approaches 157, the ratio may tilt toward selling dollars and buying yen in anticipation of intervention,” said Kanda at Gaitame.com. 

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