NEW YORK, Dec 18 The U.S. dollar tumbled against the Japanese yen on Friday after the Bank of Japan merely tweaked its monthly asset-purchase program, suggesting to traders that the central bank may not ease policy as much as expected.
Advertisement
Slow start dooms Jaguars in 38-27 loss to Saints
Quarterback Matthew Stafford was excellent once again, going 29 of 37 for 301 yards with two touchdowns and a 118.6 passer rating. Actually, some believe that he doesn’t want to be back in New Orleans and may look to get out by being traded or bought out.
The BoJ’s announcement comes just two days after the US Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate for the first time in almost a decade, signaling confidence in the recovery of the American economy.
Joy and sadness as Tima Kurdi welcomes her Syrian family to Canada
She travelled to Belgium, Germany and Turkey, helping give a voice to those displaced by the war in Syria. On Monday, he said he was grateful to the Canadian government that he did not have to work any more.
Markets were roiled Friday after the Bank of Japan unveiled measures including purchasing exchange-traded funds that track companies which are “proactively making investment in physical and human capital”.
Outgoing Indian envoy to Pakistan meets Nawaz Sharif
Bharatiya Janata Party’s Nalin Kohli told media “It was a spontaneous but bold and innovative decision to visit Pakistan”. Both prime ministers will have another opportunity to meet in Washington in March.
But they left a vast 80 trillion yen ($654 billion) annual asset-buying program unchanged.
However Japan’s central bank is still struggling to re-ignite growth after years of deflation and stagnation.
Two-year yields dropped to a record of minus 0.055 percent on Friday while 20-year yields fell to the least since February after the BOJ board lengthened the average maturities of Japanese government bonds it buys to as long as 12 years from the current limit of 10.
“At first it seemed like the BoJ was progressing with easing, but when you look at what’s inside that, it’s nothing much”, Ayako Sera a market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, told Bloomberg News.
After wrapping up their last meeting of the year, BoJ policymakers said they would boost their holdings in firms dedicated to capital investment and hiring.
The BOJ’s new scheme is aimed in part at offsetting the possible market impact of the central bank’s sales of stock purchased from financial institutions since 2002, the BOJ statement said.
BOJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the fine-tuning will allow the bank to sustain or even expand stimulus more easily, dismissing the views of some investors that it was taken to avoid bolder steps as its bond buying was drying up market liquidity. The BoJ is now scheduled to own 50% of the JGB duration risk by June 2018, about a half year earlier than under the previous easing policy, QQE 2.0. However, in our view, the market is wrong to dismiss the measures the BoJ announced today.
Advertisement
In China, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 0.06% at 21,855.87 in afternoon trade, while the Shanghai Composite index ended the session down 0.03% at 3,578.96. While consumer price gains are far from the 2 percent target, Kuroda said the inflation trend is improving and the economy is gradually recovering.
