The USD/JPY currency pair, which expresses the value of the U.S. dollar in terms of the Japanese yen, is a classic risk-on currency pair. Perhaps "classic" is the operative word here, because one of the compelling reasons for this cross historically has been the positive interest rate spread offered. Currencies that offer higher interest rates attract more capital; in good times, traders are more comfortable with leveraging this by initiating carry trades.
However, due to the COVID-19 crisis, global interest rates have sunk to the zero lower bound almost across the board. We can