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BOJ: Smart money buys back Yen, QEnfusion clears up

FXStreet (Bali) - Following some initial confusion by the market, the net change in today's BOJ monetary policy is disappointingly low, as the announcement by the Central Bank on an additional 300B in annual ETF purchases beginning in April will simply offset another existing program to sell back financial shares.

The shares of BOJ's stocks buying program, first started in 2002, will start getting sold in April 2016 at a gradual pace of 300B for the next 10 years (extended from an initial 5 year period). The only small easing is in the bond maturity extension as well as foreign-currency loans as collateral.

With regards to the bond maturity extension, the BOJ noted: "The average remaining maturity of the Bank's JGB purchases will be about 7-10 years until the end of this year and be extended to about 7-12 years from the beginning of next year."

It somehow looks as though smart money, other than squeezing 'misinformed' Yen bears post BOJ release, may also be pricing in lower chances of further BOJ easing going forward, as today's action by Kuroda may potentially telegraph that next meetings up until April 2016 - the earliest - might be not as impactful.

Soichiro Monji, chief strategist at Tokyo-based Daiwa SB Investments, was quoted by Bloomberg: "At 300 billion yen, it's on the scale of margin of error. The impact to the stock market will not be big. If it's this small, some investors will think this is the best they can do. Kuroda himself says he never does anything half-baked, but frankly speaking this is half-baked."

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