The pair is up by roughly 190 pips on the day now, with a big jump from around 133.80 going into the BOJ policy decision to trade at 135.80 levels at the moment. This is newly appointed BOJ governor, Kazuo Ueda's first meeting in charge and his policy press conference is one that has been a disasterclass to say the least.
He started off channeling his inner Kuroda by saying that the central bank will not hesitate to ease monetary policy further and that was enough to send the yen falling further on the day. But after, he went back and forth trying to clarify what exactly is this policy review that they announced - which was going to take more than a year to complete.
He gave the entire operating manual about the policy review but let's be real here, who in the world reads those things?
In his words, he is trying to say that the review is something that isn't intended to take into account near-term policy changes and is supposedly looking at more "structural" issues. Whatever the case is, markets are not listening.
The point made now is that there doesn't seem to be any immediate policy changes in the works. And Ueda's lack of finesse in emphasising that the policy review period is not related to that isn't helping the Japanese yen.
The break above 135.00 now is crucial for USD/JPY as it opens the path towards the 200-day moving average (blue line), seen at 136.96 currently. The 8 March high at 137.91 will be the next upside target after that before a potential look at 140.00 next for the pair.
