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JPY Still Undervalued; USD/JPY: To Drift Lower Towards 98

The BOJ did not add significant stimulus and the government did not surprise with its stimulus program. More falls in store? Here are the thoughts from BTMU:

Here is their view, courtesy of eFXnews:

The yen continues to trade on a stronger footing  after the BoJ disappointed market expectations by only tweaking monetary policy settings at their last meeting. With the BoJ running out of policy options at the current juncture, the burden for supporting the growth and inflation outlook in Japan is falling more heavily onto fiscal policy. The BoJ took into consideration the impact of looser fiscal policy as well at last week’s policy meeting and it is one reason why they did not ease monetary policy more aggressively. Further details of the government’s fiscal stimulus plan have been reported overnight by Bloomberg ahead of the official announcement today. According to a draft version of the budget, the plan includes JPY13.5 trillion of fiscal measures.

The report states that new spending will total JPY7.5 trillion of which JPY4.6 trillion (about 1% of GDP) is planned for the current fiscal year. The fiscal measures include: i) JPY3.4 trillion for steps to improve demographics, JPY6.2 trillion for infrastructure, JPY1.3 to mitigate Brexit risks and help smaller companies & regions, and iv) JPY2.7 trillion for relief measures for April’s Kunamoto quakes and 2011 Tohoku disaster.

The fiscal plan is expected to modestly lift the outlook for growth in Japan in the year ahead. However, we do not expect it to materially increase inflation expectations and as such it is unlikely to re-weaken the yen.  We continue to expect the yen to remain on a stronger footing.

The yen has strengthened sharply so far this year but it still remains modestly undervalued according to our long-term models.

BTMU targets USD/JPY at 98 by the end of the year.  

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Yohay Elam

Yohay Elam

Yohay Elam: Founder, Writer and Editor I have been into forex trading for over 5 years, and I share the experience that I have and the knowledge that I've accumulated. After taking a short course about forex. Like many forex traders, I've earned a significant share of my knowledge the hard way. Macroeconomics, the impact of news on the ever-moving currency markets and trading psychology have always fascinated me. Before founding Forex Crunch, I've worked as a programmer in various hi-tech companies. I have a B. Sc. in Computer Science from Ben Gurion University. Given this background, forex software has a relatively bigger share in the posts.