BOJ Announces It Will Bring Thursday’s Policy Meeting To Noon Monday: Nikkei Jumps, Yen Drops

With the Fed telegraphing an all out capital markets panic as the Fed could not wait a mere three days until the scheduled FOMC meeting to rush out the biggest monetary bazooka in history which proved to not be enough, the rest of the developed world’s central banks had no choice but to fall in line – after all if, one panics, all must panic. And sure enough, early on Sunday, the Bank of Japan announced it will hold an emergency meeting at noon local time, raising investor sentiment about global policy coordination amid the spread of the new coronavirus, and helping spike the Nikkei 225 up 1.6% on Monday morning, although the index has since given up much of the gains.

The Bank of Japan announced on Monday morning that like the Fed, it too will move its policy meeting up to Monday afternoon rather than on Thursday as initially planned, as part of concerted efforts worldwide to shore up the global economy.

Tokyo’s Nikkei Stock Average jumped nearly 300 points to 17,726, its first rise in four days after a turbulent week that sent global stock markets crashing over fears of a global economic slowdown, as the coronavirus pandemic hits global supply chains while cases continue to surge in Europe and the U.S. However it then quickly pared all gains before dipping modestly in the green.

After the BOJ’s announcement, the yen declined 0.92 yen to 106.92 after surging as highas 105.80 per U.S. dollar as investors pinned hopes on monetary easing, driving demand for the dollar. However, in light of the $12 trillion dollar global margin call, we expect to see the yen, a global risk-off proxy, surge much, much higher before the day is done.

While it is unclear just what additional credible steps the BOJ can offer, Takahide Kiuchi, a former BOJ policy board member writes that Kuroda will likely raise its annual purchase of ETFs funds to 9 trln yen from the current 6 trln yen, which however means that the central bank will simply end up nationalizing the market much faster than previously scheduled. The central bank could also theoretically lower its short-term interest rate target to minus 0.2% from minus 0.1% according to Kiuchi, now executive economist at Nomura Research Institute, although with Japan’s banks already screaming at the torture of years of NIRP, all this action will do is bring forward the demise of Japan’s banking sector.

Which is precisely why Japan’s Kuroda is now completely trapped.