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Thursday, July 12, 2012

BOJ holds rates steady and Yen seen as haven

Today the Bank of Japan (BOJ) made a technical change to its asset buying programme. This saw the Dollar enjoying a short rise against the Yen and it remained close to a two year high to the Euro.
Euro Sinks To Fresh 2-Year Low, No Easing From BOJ
The troubled Euro relinquished all of the its recent gains against the US Dollar and went on to fall to a fresh 2-year low.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan declined making further changes to monetary easing policies as expected but instead went on to make a technical change to their asset buying programme, leaving the Japanese Yen close to a 2-year high against the Euro
Despite recent moves to ease monetary policy by central banks in the Euro zone, Britain and China, the BOJ refrained from doing the same as it had been expected to do.
The BOJ held its key policy rate in a range of zero to 0.1% and stopped short of additional easing steps. It did though tweak its asset buying and lending programme.
It decided to maintained the total size at 70 trillion Yen ($879 billion) however, it pledged to purchase more short term securities and at the same time reduce the amount it offers under fixed rate market operations.
The Dollar advanced as high as 79.97 Yen following the announcement, however shortly thereafter erased the move and earlier was trading at 79.49 Yen. Economic slowdown concerns have enhanced demand for the Yen as a haven.
Yesterday's minutes of last month's Federal Reserve meeting had revealed that the U.S economy would have to worsen further before the Fed would take any more easing steps.
As a result, the Dollar index soared to a two year high of 83.610 overnight.
The Euro held steady at $1.2242 having fallen overnight to a two year low of $1.2212. The Euro has fallen around 5.5% so far this year.
It seems there will be no quick judgment from a German court on the Euro zone's bailout fund which is adding to investor uncertainty about Europe's progress to address its debt crisis.
In Spain, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy yielded to EU pressure to attempt avoiding a full state bailout and unveiled new measures to slash 65 billion Euro from the public deficit by 2014.
The Australian Dollar took a hit after data showed an unexpected drop in Australian employment in June. This has added to concerns about its economic outlook following reports of a slowdown in China, Australia's biggest trading partner.
Earlier today the Australian Dollar was down 0.6% at $1.0185, as investors priced in the possibility of further interest rate reductions.

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