The change in tone from Ueda today is making the difference, with USD/JPY tumbling by roughly 100 pips on his press conference. The pair was hugging the 148.00 mark earlier on but is now trading closer to 147.00 as Ueda looks to be teeing up a policy move in March or April next.
As you can see from the chart above, the pair is now moving closer towards a test of its 200-hour moving average (blue line) next at 146.88 currently. At the same time, sellers are also looking to keep a break below the 100-day moving average of 147.50 on the day. That will be a major technical blow to the recent upside momentum in the pair to start the year.
As USD/JPY gets dragged lower, it is also impacting the dollar's performance in general at the moment. EUR/USD is up 0.3% to 1.0913 while USD/CHF is down 0.5% to 0.8650 on the day. Meanwhile, the antipodean currencies are extending earlier gains with AUD/USD up 0.6% to 0.6610 and NZD/USD up 0.6% to 0.6114 currently.
