- The Bank of Japan (BOJ) two-day monetary policy meeting concludes today.
- There is no scheduled time for the end-of-meeting BOJ announcement, it comes at the conclusion of the meeting, whenever that will be.
- Ordinarily it can be expected sometime in the 0300-0500GMT window, but as I am not expecting any policy changes at all to be announced it could come a little earlier. So, I’m guessing 0230-0330GMT.
There are things to watch out for in Japan, which the BOJ will be aware of, but these will probaby influence policy at coming meetings, not at this one:
- Japan’s recent economic figures are mixed, but are not weak enough to force the BOJ to conduct additional easing
- The ‘third arrow’ on Abenomics – there should be a new growth strategy expected toward the end of June. The main focus is a reform of corporate tax, and a likely increase in importing labour resources (foreign workers). In coming quarters the impacts of these is not going to be large.
- And, of course, the BOJ will be watching for any decline in real disposable income, and spending, of households due to the April 1 hike in the consumption tax rate
- There is an expected seasonality in Japanese lifers’ foreign bond investments (i.e yen negative), which peak in April, but this is not happening as lifers have sharply increased the FX-hedge ratios on their foreign bond investments since the global financial crisis.