The carry trade gets a bad rap as a kind of speculation. In fact, no one does it to raise the stakes. In practice the trade is part of a portfolio, and the idea is to boost the weight of safer assets. Done right, this increases return without more risk. The unwinding can draw on resources from anywhere in the portfolio. The long assets, bonds, can be nice to have in a volatility squall, so traders might prefer to liquidate riskier equities. The dollar’s relatively modest loss could simply mean that carry traders were underweighting US equities like any sane person would do.