Barton Wilson, a junior analyst, is a new hire at a money center bank. He has been assigned to help Juanita Chevas, CFA, in the currency trading…

Barton Wilson, a junior analyst, is a new hire at a money center bank. He has been assigned to help Juanita Chevas, CFA, in the currency trading department. Together, Wilson and Chevas are working on the development of new trading software designed to detect profitable opportunities in the foreign exchange market. Obviously, they are interested in risk-free arbitrage opportunities. However, they have also been instructed to investigate the possibility of longer-term currency exposures that are not necessarily risk-free. To test the logic of their new software, Wilson gathers the following market data: • Spot JPY/USD exchange rate = 120. • Spot EUR/USD exchange rate = 0.7224. • U.S. risk-free interest rate = 7%. • Eurozone risk-free rate = 9.08%. • Japanese risk-free rate = 3.88%. • Yield curves in all three currencies are flat. In addition to in-house currency transactions, the new software program is also intended to provide insight into currency exposure and hedging needs for the bank's major customers. These customers typically include large multinational firms. Essentially, the bank wants to provide consulting services to its clients concerning which currency exposures offer the greatest possibility of appreciation. In this process, the bank will rely on deviations from international parity conditions as an indicator of long-term currency movements. Wilson obtains the following data from the econometrics department: • JPY/USD spot rate one year ago =116. • EUR/USD spot rate one year ago = 0.7200. • Anticipated and historical U.S. annual inflation = 3%. • Anticipated and historical Japanese annual inflation = 0%. • Anticipated and historical Eurozone annual inflation = 5%. One of the bank's major customers has significant portions of its business in Japan, and the Eurozone and has long exposure to both currencies. The customer has traditionally hedged all currency risk. However, the customer's new risk manager has decided to leave some currency exposure unhedged in an attempt to profit from long-term currency exposure. Wilson wants to approximate the forward discount/premium for the JPY against the USD 12 months from now. According to the approximate version of interest rate parity, the JPY would most likely trade at a: