For the first time in 17 years, the Bank of Japan raised its benchmark interest rate. The BOJ was the last of the major central banks to have negative interest rates. Now, its target range is 0.0-0.1%. The move had been widely telegraphed, but investors will be watching to see what the ripple effects of the move are.

Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita breaks down the move in the video above.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, the Bank of Japan, the BOJ, is raising interest rates for the first time in 17 years today, making it the last major central bank to exit the world's negative rate policy.

The country is the top holder of US sovereign debt. And as yields are going up, what does this mean for the global bond market? To help break down how investors should be looking at this policy change, we've got "Yahoo Finance's" very own Akiko Fujita here with us. Hey, Akiko.

AKIKO FUJITA: Good morning to you, Brad. You're, certainly, right. This is truly the end of an era when you consider the Bank of Japan. As you said, the major central bank, or the last of the major central banks to exit a policy that was largely seen as extreme and risky in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

At its peak, you had the European Central Bank, as well as central banks in Denmark, Switzerland, and Sweden all setting their interest rates below zero. And now, that Japan's ended the longest experiment, the question is going to become, number one, how effective was this? But also, what does it mean for global markets?

We should mention, the BOJ governor largely messaged this move. But we did see that dollar-yen cross pushed lower with the dollar or yen, I should say, trading about 150 to the dollar there. It's certainly going to be interesting for US investors to be watching here, the impact this is going to have on bond markets outside of Japan, particularly, treasuries.

This eight-year experiment left more than $4 trillion in funds for higher yield outside of Japan. Japan, as you mentioned, the largest buyer of US debt. We're talking about $1.1 trillion here. And the question is going to be, how quickly that money will return to Japan with yields for Japanese government bonds expected to push higher. Though, we should point out, this yield differential between the Japanese government bonds and other bonds certainly still remains high.

Now, the other thing to watch here is going to be what happens to the Nikkei. We've been talking about this a lot. The Nikkei hitting records in recent weeks here. Largely, driven by fundamental policy changes. But, also, driven by a cheaper yen.