Has the Earth Just Moved In Japan?

Our 2017 views have centred on two key themes: a stronger China and a weaker US dollar. We predicted the implications would be a higher Euro and strongly rising Asian stock markets, as regional policy-makers monetized the impact of capital inflows. We were ambivalent towards the Yen. Our hunch that things had changed in Japan may be borne out by subsequent events, which unusually have seen the Yen largely unmoved by a skidding US dollar, but Tokyo stocks upbeat. We argue again here that Bank of Japan policy looks to have made a sea-change towards targeting the Yen and no longer targeting the volume of liquidity at a set level. If correct, it provides further bullish ammunition for Japanese equities, but warns of upcoming problems for fixed income markets.