The Bank of Japan kept its main policy levers unchanged
- short-term rates minus 0.1%
- 10-year Japanese government bond (JGB) yields to move around 0%
- retained a reference to the fluctuation range for 10-year bond yields to "around plus or minus 0.5 percentage point"
- will maintains a ceiling of 1% for 10-year JGB yields, to buy JGBs at that level every day
Its guidance remained dovish:
- the bank "will not hesitate to take additional easing measures if necessary."
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Fixed-rate bond purchase operations at 1% were introduced in the last meeting in July
- the BOJ has been purchasing an average of 10 trillion yen (US$67billion) worth of JGBs a month so far this year, fastest pace ever
- the BOJ now owns 53% of Japanese government bonds in circulation
- long-term yields have been rising at a fairly steady pace, hitting the highest in 10 years
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The BOJ is under growing government pressure to respond to the yen's sharp depreciation.
There are some expectations that Bank of Japan Governor Ueda will address the weakening current in his news conference scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Japan time, in an effort to slow, its fall.
- 0630 GMT
- 0230 US Eastern time
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USD/JPY update:
