After the Swiss National Bank stunned dealers with its move to curb the franc, the focus in currency markets on Wednesday switched to Tokyo. Would the Bank of Japan, under orders from the Ministry of Finance, respond in kind to limit gains in the yen?
It did not. At the end of its scheduled two-day policy meeting, the BoJ kept the same monetary settings it adopted on August 4, when it expanded a programme under which it buys Japanese government bonds and other assets to push down effective market interest rates.
“After the SNB’s decisive action, people were expecting something from MoF,” says Yunosuke Ikeda, head of FX strategy at Nomura in Tokyo, noting that the yen strengthened from Y77.39 to Y77.07 against the US dollar in the minutes following the BoJ’s unanimous decision. “Normally, after an announcement of inaction the dollar/yen rate tends to be stable.”