UsdJpy

The weaker than forecasted durables goods orders were not able to move the USD more than 10 pips as the focus was on the comments from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben S. Bernanke, who announced the same as the past seven months, that is, the pressure on inflation means more than the slowing economy. In his speech to the Congress yesterday, Bernanke informed that risks to economic growth have increased, especially because of the downturns in housing and company investment. He rebuffed the notion that officials had shifted to a ``neutral'' stance and, in doing so, reduced speculation borrowing costs will be cut in coming months. Bernanke's comments came to a surprise to us as we saw more downside in the USD after the prior FOMC statement, but we have changed our stnace to neutral in the short term on the USD, awaiting the Q4 final figures for the GDP, PCE Core QoQ and Personal Consumption along with the weekly jobless claims. We do not expect big things to happen unless we see a big deviation from the forecasted, but are focusing on the February key data tomorrow, where the PCE Deflator, PCE Core MoM/YoY, Chicago PMI, Construction Spending and the final Michigan confidence figures will be released. For today we see USDJPY remaining heavy and the inability to break above 118.50 this week, suggest more downside to come in the short term. Sell the break of 116.35, target 115.50 and then 114.00. If filled, apply 30-40 pip stop.