The yen was stronger against its rival currencies on Monday, with Japanese corporate players moving to pick up the Japanese currency after its rapid depreciation since Friday. The U.S. dollar USDJPY, -0.55% weakened to as low as ¥111.03 before slightly recovering to ¥111.13. That compared with ¥111.80 late Friday in New York. Read: Dollar logs largest weekly gain vs. yen since November 2014 After touching its three-week high of ¥111.90 earlier in the session on hopes that the Bank of Japan might launch extra stimulus measures, the dollar's upside was weighed down due to selling by Japanese corporate players such as exporters ahead of their book closing at the end of the month. The BOJ's policy setters are scheduled to meet April 27-28. "We are seeing correction to excessive move" since Friday, said Yuzo Sakai, manager of FX business promotion at Tokyo Forex & Ueda Harlow. "But as there still remain hopes for an extra easing by the BOJ, the dollar stopped falling just above ¥111 and [remains] directionless," said Sakai. The Japanese currency weakened substantially on Friday due to expectations that the BOJ would ease further later this week. The yen selling gained traction especially because some speculative investors were quickly unwinding their yen-buying positions after building up bullish bets on the Japanese currency to a recent record-high level. Investors had continued to force up the yen until recently, due to a lack of faith in the BOJ's negative-rates policy and a belief that the U.S. Federal Reserve will stand pat for some time. The yen also strengthened against the euro. The common currency EURJPY, -0.40% fell to ¥124.96 from ¥125.49 late Friday, while the U.K. pound GBPJPY, -0.24% dropped to ¥160.58 from ¥161.00. The Australian dollar AUDJPY, -0.37% declined to ¥85.57 from ¥86.17. In other currency-pair trading, the euro EURUSD, +0.1514% was at $1.1240 from $1.1222. The WSJ Dollar Index BUXX, -0.27% a measure of the dollar against a basket of major currencies, was down 0.23% at 86.55.
