BoJ: Don’t think further easing is likely – RBC CM

Adam Cole, Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets, suggests that the BoJ policy announcement is due overnight tonight (no fixed time, but typically around 05:00 BST).

Key Quotes

“Although the consensus is for no change in both the asset purchase target and the policy rate, there is a significant minority looking for either a step up in asset purchases (7 from 37 in Bloomberg’s survey) or cut in rates (five from 40).

We don’t think further easing is likely (and are short GBP/JPY in our trade of the week partly for that reason). Coming less than five months after the introduction of the negative interest rate policy (compared to 18 and 15 months between the previous policy changes) a further tranche of easing now would be hard to reconcile with the BoJ’s stated policy of avoiding incremental policy changes.”