#日本加息 12 December 19 news Japan interest rate hike analysis, at noon 11 o'clock, Japan announced a 25% interest rate hike, raising the benchmark interest rate from 0.5% to 0.75%. This is the third interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan since the beginning of 2025, when it raised rates by 25 basis points. Research institutions generally believe that this marks the end of Japan's era of monetary easing. On December 11 prior, the Federal Reserve lowered the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points. During this round of rate cuts, the upper limit of the U.S. federal funds target rate has been reduced from a peak of 5.50% to 3.75%. The Fed's rate cuts and the Bank of Japan's rate hikes have reduced the Japan-U.S. interest rate differential from a peak of 560 basis points at the beginning of last year to the current 300 basis points.
Currently, the biggest concern in the market is that the yen carry trade may reverse on a large scale. For decades, the yen has become the core funding currency for global carry trades due to its long-term low interest rates. Investors typically borrow low-cost yen, exchange it for U.S. dollars, euros, and other currencies, and invest in high-yield overseas assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds and emerging market stocks to earn interest rate spreads and exchange rate gains.
According to data from the Bank for International Settlements, if we include leveraged funds with multi-layered collateral, the broad scale of global yen carry trades is approximately $19.2 trillion, equivalent to the sum of the GDPs of Japan, Germany, and the UK. Huaxi Futures pointed out that the impact of the Bank of Japan's interest rate hike discussions has spread globally through multiple channels, with the Asia-Pacific market being the first to bear the brunt. Since December 2025, affected by expectations of interest rate hikes, the Asia-Pacific stock market has collectively come under pressure. The direct reason is that international funds are withdrawing from emerging markets and turning to yen assets in search of certain returns. For economies with current account deficits like the Philippines and Indonesia, capital outflows have triggered depreciation pressure on local currencies, forcing central banks to maintain high interest rates, limiting policy space for stimulating the economy. The reshaping of trade patterns is another important transmission path. The yen interest rate hike will drive the appreciation of the yen, weakening the price competitiveness of Japan's core export industries such as automobiles and electronics, providing market share replacement opportunities for similar exporting countries like China and South Korea. However, as a major resource-importing country, interest rate hikes in Japan may suppress domestic demand, leading to a reduction in imports of bulk commodities such as Australian iron ore and Indonesian coal, putting pressure on the economies of resource-exporting countries. $BTC
