Fukui has said nothing new, he has pretty much repeated what the market already knows and hasn't changed the timing of a shift on quantitative easing.
I think the fact that every time we've gone below 114 yen (on dollar/yen) we've bounced back higher, is beginning to become a bit of a concern for those playing the short-term market by trying to push dollar-yen lower.
The data are becoming ever more important. There's no justification in the data to date to warrant the market to push aggressively for 5.25 percent.
We could argue possibly that we've seen a little bit of stability since we've had the interest rate cut out of the way. Certainly the market is not as convinced over the need for further substantial monetary tightening in the UK.
Following previous moves by the Federal Reserve, the market pretty much immediately looked ahead and had a confident view on the interest-rate outlook for the next two meetings. That's been a supportive factor for the dollar. Now it seems to be different.
The consensus is that we are definitely going to war and it's probably two to three weeks away, no more than that. We can take it as a given that the Bank of Japan is in the market at or around 117, so that the low we have tested in the past at 116.80 remains intact.
The market has already come to the conclusion that the medium-term impact of Katrina will be negligible if not net positive, therefore weak figures in the near term won't have any bearing. The market is now looking for a Fed move next week.
The market is now beginning to look beyond the potential first step in terms of a shift from quantitative easing to interest rate targeting.