Friday, March 11, 2011

Japan: profitting from the Yen rising or dropping after the earthquake; can't have it both ways

The main Japanese Yen 's ETF is FXY. It has been through a  bit of a roller coaster, this before the devastating and unfortunate earthquake:



Although there are many ETFs that track the Yen and other currencies. We track them live here.



Unlike New Zealand's recent earthquake, the markets reaction to the quake in Japan did not cause the Yen to fall. There are many opinions out there. Some analysts opine that Japan will need to repatriate yens in order to reconstruct, and that's why the Yen actually rose today.

However, the Yen was actually at too high levels, according to the Bank Of Japan recently. A high Yen will definitely hurt Japan's exporters, at a time when they need as much help as they can get.

The Yen will also be key to gold prices. High yens, low U.S. Dollar, high gold, it is all intertwined.

This is why we like straddles so much. With straddles an investor can benefit whether the underlying stock goes up or down, as long as it moves a minimum amount. We compute these with the online StraddlesCalc tool.

Here are current straddles for March and April (prices as of 3:30PM)




March is of course extremely dangerous as there is onoy 1 week to go for those options to expire. However, the moves required are very low. Today's move (+1.33%) is higher than the move needed for a week.

What will it be? Rise or drop? It does not matter.


Options are very dangerous and may cause 100% loss. Please do your own due diligence. This is not advice!

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