USD/JPY climbs to fresh daily high, further beyond mid-134.00s despite weaker USD

• USD/JPY gains strong positive traction in reaction to dovish remarks by BoJ’s Ueda.
• Sliding US bond yields continues to weigh on the USD and might act as a headwind.
• The cautious market mood could benefit the JPY and contribute to capping the pair.

The USD/JPY pair kicks off the new week on a positive note and builds on its steady intraday ascent through the early North American session. The momentum lifts spot prices to a fresh daily high, around the 134.70-134.75 region in the last hour and is sponsored by the heavily offered tone surrounding the Japanese Yen (JPY).

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) Kazuo Ueda sounded dovish this Monday and said that the central bank must maintain monetary easing as trend inflation is still below 2%. Ueda added that inflation forecasts must be quite strong and close to 2% in the coming year to consider tweaking yield curve control. This marks a big divergence in comparison to the recent hawkish remarks by several Federal Reserve (Fed) officials, indicating that the US central bank will continue raising interest rates, and turns out to be a key factor pushing the USD/JPY pair higher.

Meanwhile, the prospects for further policy tightening by the Fed fuel worries about economic headwinds stemming from rising borrowing costs and boosting demand for traditional safe-haven assets. This leads to a further decline in the US Treasury bond yields, which drags the US Dollar (USD) to a one-week low and might hold back traders from placing aggressive bullish bets around the USD/JPY pair. Apart from this, the global flight to safety could benefit the JPY and further contribute to capping the upside for the major, at least for the time being.

Traders might also prefer to wait on the sidelines ahead of this week's important US macro releases, starting with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index on Tuesday. This will be followed by the US Durable Goods Orders data on Wednesday, the Advance Q1 GDP prints on Thursday and the US Core PCE Price Index - the Fed's preferred inflation gauge on Friday. Apart from this, traders will take cues from the highly-anticipated BoJ monetary policy meeting on the last day of the week should determine the near-term trajectory for the USD/JPY pair.

Technical levels to watch