Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Mrs Watanabe--Japanese housewives having a great influence on the foreign exchange market

As you might know, the declining birthrate is one of the big issues that Japan is facing. The public has realized that it will definitely put Japan into a serious situation. However, some of our social situations make people hesitate to have a child or more children and our government still hasn't taken effective measures against these situations. In addition, although the government requires companies to give their employees environments that encourage them to have more children, they haven't fully met the requirements. In my opinion, as long as companies keep requiring their employees, regardless of gender, to work long hours, the birthrate won't increase.  Given the fact that the workforce in Japan is shrinking, I think that companies should take advantage of capable mothers, although I know that it will compel companies to bear more cost.

Under these circumstances, capable stay-at-home mothers and housewives, many of whom were forced to quit their jobs, tend to start doing their own businesses or make extra money at home. Electronic financial transactions are particularly popular among these women since it's easy to start doing if they don't expect to make big profits. Many of them don't have a high level of expertise. Although the transaction amount with which each person deals is usually very small, the total amount is big enough to have a powerful impact especially on the foreign exchange market.

According to the news, some Western foreign exchange dealers found that transactions made by Japanese individual investors, particularly housewives, often affected the exchange rate when they examined factors for frequent dollar-buying that any technical analysis couldn't explain. Since a British newspaper referred to these Japanese housewives as Mrs. Watanabe, which is a common Japanese family names, the term "Mrs. Watanabe" has been used in Western countries. I don't know why Watanabe was chosen. I wonder if it's because a Japanese actor named Ken Watanabe is popular in Hollywood these days. Actually, I didn't know about the term until I watched a TV news program a few days ago. Have you heard of the term?