Foreign Currency
Yen Carry Trade Unwinds
A meltdown in world equity markets in recent days is more reflective of a wind-down of carry trades used by investors to juice their bets than a hard and fast shift in the U.S. economic outlook, analysts say. While Friday's weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs data was the catalyst for the market sell-off, with Japan's blue-chip Nikkei index on Monday suffering its biggest one-day rout since the 1987 Black Monday selloff, the employment report alone wasn't weak enough to be the main driver of such violent moves, they added.