• The first part of the session saw comments from Ministers leaving the Brussels Eurogroup meeting
  • Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem was elected head of the Eurogroup
  • Juncker: Cyprus bailout could be agreed in March
  • Disbursement to Greece to be approved formally in a week: Greece to get about 7Bn Euro in bonds, 2Bn in cash
  • S&P affirms Portugal’s ‘BB/B’ ratings: Outlook remains negative
  • Ireland and Portugal lobby for repayment extension on aid
  • Asahi Shimbun reported that the BOJ and Government were set to agree on the 2% inflation goal as being in the ‘Near term’ (not medium-term as previously expected)
  • There was a briefing to reporters after the Japanese Cabinet Meeting, Amari, Aso and Suga speaking
  • Amari is to attend the Davos summit where he will explain that there is no political intention to weaken the Yen (I’m not sure anyone will believe him though)
  • Aso said the 2% inflation target will be ‘substantial progress’ and that the Yen is correcting a lot
  • Aso said the next fiscal year budget will tighter, and that the Government, not the BOJ, should be responsible for employment
  • Aso stated that it is possible that the BOJ Board will be divided on the 2% inflation target
  • These government minister statements were all ahead of the BOJ statement
  • The BOJ statement hit at 0347GMT, the key decisions were:
  • The BOJ has adopted the 2% inflation target, its to be a medium-term target
  • Will buy certain amount of assets every month without deadline
  • Open-ended asset purchase commitment from January 2014
  • Overnight call rate target unchanged at 0.1%
  • Japanese government pledged to stick with fiscal discipline

USD/JPY traded lower in the hours before the BOJ statement, taking out some stops around 89.30 before trading back up to settle around 89.50. Ten minutes prior to the announcement there appeared to be leak, with the USD/JPY spiking above 89.80 before coming back to 89.60. Once the announcements were made the USD/JPY traded as high as 90.13 where it once again failed. It slipped to 89.85/95 for a few minutes and then plunged in the dreadfully illiquid conditions to new lows on the day 89.15 and thence to trigger stops below 89.00. It traded as low as 88.93 before bouncing back to 89.20.

EUR/USD has a very quiet day, only moving once the Yen started its dance. It moved from the day’s lows around 1.3300/05 to a high of 1.3358, taking out stops above 1.3330, 40 and 50.

The AUD and NZD had a quiet morning, both in very tight ranges; once they started to move up, on what appeared to be cross-buying against the Yen in the hour and a half leading up to the BOJ announcement the two moved strongly, the NZD to a high of 0.8408 and the AUD/USD to 1.0544.

GBP/USD was a laggard, but it did manage to out in a high of 1.5862.

The CHF strengthened, real money said to be buyers of CHF, taking USD/CHF as low as 0.9297