Japanese Yen Fall Amid Rising Asian Stocks

By Alex Ho

Investing.com - The Japanese yen fell against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday in Asia, while the Chinese yuan inched up as traders continued to focus on developments on the coronavirus front.

The USD/JPY pair gained 0.2% to 110.04 by 1:30 AM ET (05:30 GMT) as the Japanese yen lost some safe-haven appeal due to the uptick in Asian stocks today.

The USD/CNY pair rose 0.1% to 7.0012. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has set the Yuan reference rate 7.0012 at versus Tuesday's fix at 6.9826.

Meanwhile, the US dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies inched up 0.1% to 99.370.

The Hubei province reported 132 deaths for Feb. 18. So far, China has 74,186 confirmed cases of the virus, according to government data.

While the new cases in Hubei fell for a second day, the World Health Organization cautioned that "every scenario is still on the table" in terms of the epidemic's evolution, and that it was too earlier to know if the epidemic was being contained.

"The market is trying to model itself on coronavirus and it's struggling really hard to understand how that goes and that's pushing capital in to the U.S.," said Chris Weston, head of research at Melbourne brokerage Pepperstone, in a Reuters report.

"The U.S. remains that least-dirty T-shirt, the best house in a fairly shabby-looking neighborhood. As a destination for capital, it's still the light that you look for."

The EUR/USD pair steadied at 1.0793 after falling to near a two-year low yesterday as investor sentiment in Germany deteriorated more than expected in February, adding to concerns about the ongoing weakness in the euro zone.

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