Anger about the 2008 bailout makes sense. Yen carry unwind deserves attention. However, the trading call to action fails on market structure.

Key counterpoints:

- Global FX turnover runs near $9.6T per day (BIS, April 2025). A retail wave of calls will not move USD/JPY in a durable way at that scale.

- /6J options settle on /6J futures. When you buy calls, you mostly push dealer delta hedging into futures, then dealers unwind as exposure changes. No sustained spot yen demand comes from that flow.

- FXY calls track an ETF wrapper, not spot.

- “Widowmaker trade” most often refers to repeated losses from shorting Japanese government bonds, not a long-yen crowd squeeze.

That $9.6T is mostly back and forth non-directional HFT.

Otherwise it would not take a day to swap $500 mil for commercial reasons (think buying a couple Boeing plane with Euros) to avoid too much market impact as documented in multiple interviews with currency dealers stating it takes them 1 day to "work" a $500 mil order.

Retail can move FX, if it piles into one pair. But unlike the Boeing order they will also need to exit the trade at some point, which makes them vulnerable.