A snippet from BNZ today on Friday’s Bank of Japan statement and Kuroda’s press conference:

• the BoJ remains an outlier with its ultra-accommodative monetary policy stance
• As expected, the BoJ kept its Yield Curve Control and other policy settings unchanged on Friday
• In the press conference, Kuroda pushed back against expectations for a shift towards tightening any time soon, pointing to the BoJ’s forecasts for inflation to fall back below 2% over the next two years and saying, “at the moment we don’t see a rate hike coming or an exit from policy
• Despite Kuroda expressing confidence in the BoJ’s inflation forecasts, the market is much less sure. Given the increase in underlying inflation over the past six months, investors think the BoJ will ultimately be forced into a policy U-turn over the next year

ICYMI, Friday’s posts on the Bank of Japan:

USD/JPY update: