Photographer: Kentaro Takahashi/Bloomberg

Japanese traders turned sellers of U.S. sovereign debt to the tune of 618.7 billion yen ($5.6 billion) in February as the worldwide bond rout compelled them to chop losses.

The online gross sales, the primary since August, additionally got here as they bought a report quantity of Australian sovereign debt, in keeping with Japan’s balance-of-payment figures launched on Thursday.

“As U.S. yields led international yields larger in February, web promoting broadly overwhelmed the Japanese funding stance,” stated Tsuyoshi Ueno, a senior economist at NLI Analysis Institute in Tokyo. “Buyers look to have minimize their losses.”

Because the Biden administration’s pandemic-relief invoice boosted expectations for a stronger U.S. financial restoration and pushed down bonds, Japanese traders decreased their interest-rate threat exposures, stated Kenta Inoue, a senior market economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Ltd. in Tokyo. He added that there might also have been some revenue taking.