The Kuroda era officially ended on the weekend and that means Kazuo Ueda has taken the helm at the Bank of Japan.
It's straight into the fire for the new leader with a news conference at 1015 GMT. That's prime time in Tokyo at 7:15 pm ET and it's at 6:15 am in New York.
Whenever there is a new central bank governor, the market speculates about a change in policy and that's particularly true when the BOJ is isolated globally with rates zeroed out. But history shows that central banks like to maintain policy for an initial period. I suspect that Ueda won't face any pressure to shift policy at least through Q2 and maybe through year end.
Another trope about new central bankers is that they usually make an early misstep. A recent example is ECB President Christine Lagarde saying "I'm not here to close spreads" causing a meltdown in Italian bonds only for it to be quickly walked back.
What will it mean for the yen? If there is a mistake to be made, it's all on the hawkish side, which argues for speculative yen buying once the non-farm payrolls flows stop. He couldn't be any more dovish than Kuroda and at some point, the BOJ will have to deal with the 700 trillion yen balance sheet.
