CHF/JPY loses 3% after SNB rate decision, Japan FX intervention

• CHF/JPY suffered heavy losses during the European trading hours on Thursday.
• SNB hiked its policy rate by 75 bps following September policy meeting.
• Japanese government announced that they intervened in the FX market.

After having touched its highest level since 1980 above 151.00 earlier in the day, the CHF/JPY pair lost over 600 pips in the last hour. As of writing, the pair was down nearly 3% on the day at 145.00.

Earlier in the day, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) announced that it left its policy settings unchanged, keeping the policy rate steady at 0.1% and maintaining the 10-year  JGB yield target at 0.00%. With the initial reaction, the JPY weakened against its rivals and allowed CHF/JPY to gather bullish momentum.

During the European trading hours, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) said that it hiked the policy rate by 75 basis points to 0.5%. Since markets have been speculating that the SNB could opt for a 100 bps hike, this decision caused the CHF to lose interest and capped CHF/JPY's upside.

SNB hikes rates by 75 bps to 0.50%, as widely expected.

Finally, Japan's top currency diplomat Masato Kanda said they have intervened in the FX market to limit JPY weakness, adding that the government “took decisive action in the forex market.”

Breaking: USD/JPY corrects sharply below 144.00 as Japan intervenes.

Combined with the SNB's smaller-than-speculated 75 bps hike, the Japanese government's intervention opened the flood gates and caused CHF/JPY to suffer one of the largest one-day declines in its history. 

CHF/JPY 15-min chart