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Japanese government bonds fell on Wednesday after the Bank of Japan reduces the size of bonds purchases in its daily market operation. Also, investors await the last monetary policy meeting of 2017, which is scheduled to be held on Thursday.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to its price, climbed 1 basis point to 0.049 percent, the yield on new long-term 40-year also rose nearly 1 basis point to 0.967 percent and the yield on short-term 2-year gained 1/2 basis point at -0.144 percent by 03:10 GMT.
The Bank of Japan trimmed its purchases of Japanese government bonds maturing in 10 to 25 years in its buying operations held today. The central bank offered to buy 200 billion yen (10-25 years of maturity), down from Monday’s 410 billion yen, 300 billion yen of JGBs maturing in three to five years, and 250 billion yen below 3 years.
The BoJ is expected to maintain its ‘QQE with yield curve control’ policy unchanged at this week’s monetary policy meeting and markets will be listening closely whether Kuroda will elaborate on recent comments, according to a recent report from Danske Bank.
Speculations about policy tightening from the Bank of Japan (BoJ) have gained momentum since governor Kuroda gave a speech at the University of Zurich, where he mentioned the “reversal rate”. Since then, Kuroda has backtracked somewhat on the Zurich remarks, saying that the yield curve control is designed to be highly sustainable. The economic upturn in Japan is still mainly driven by foreign demand as Japanese exporters enjoy tailwind from the relatively weak yen.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Nikkei 225 traded flat at 22,872.50 by 03:10, while at 04:00GMT, the FxWirePro's Hourly Yen Strength Index remained neutral at -55.78 (a reading above +75 indicates a bullish trend, while that below -75 a bearish trend). For more details, visit http://www.fxwirepro.com/currencyindex
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