The dollar edged up against the yen on Friday in light bargain-hunting following two sessions of losses, with some markets slowly getting into gear after the Christmas holiday.
Tags: Bank of Japan
Bank of Japan to maintain aggressive stimulus, recovery view
The Bank of Japan is set to maintain its massive stimulus program on Tuesday and signal its conviction that a steady economic recovery will help achieve its ambitious price target without immediate, additional monetary easing.
Weak spending to show Japan consumers unconvinced by Bank of Japan's stimulus
Japanese households cut spending further and retail sales fell for the first time in seven months in January, data on Friday is likely to show, a sign the central bank's radical stimulus has yet to convince consumers that inflation will take hold.
Sterling firmer in sleepy start to holiday week
Sterling scaled a six-week peak early on Monday following recent hawkish-sounding comments from the Bank of England, while the other major currencies were subdued in a holiday-riddled week.
Eyes of the world on Greece
The coming week will go a long way to dictating whether Greece remains in the euro zone. A meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday is tasked with producing a deal that will keep Greece solvent and which is acceptable to both sides.
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Japan aims to give a quick boost to lagging regional economies and low-income households with subsidies, merchandise vouchers and other schemes in a $29 billion stimulus package aimed at rejuvenating a two-year reflationary effort, a draft of the plan showed.
World markets are ending their last full week of 2014 on a high, as Wall Street made its biggest two-day advance since late 2011 and European shares headed for their strongest week of the year.
Gold prices tumbled on Monday after Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected proposals to boost gold reserves in a referendum, joining the broad rout in commodities that sent oil prices to five-year lows and copper to four-year lows.
Asian shares gave back some of their China-inspired gains on Tuesday, while oil prices slumped ahead of this week's OPEC meeting.
With US Fed likely to increase the interest rates by mid 2015 and ECB and BoJ keeping their monetary policy accommodative, there could be major capital flows from euro area and Japan into the US and thereby leading to further strengthening of the US dollar.
U.S. consumer spending fell for the first time in eight months in September, suggesting the economy lost some momentum heading into the fourth quarter.
A top Japanese government official said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should delay a planned sales-tax increase, the strongest sign yet that economic weakness is causing concern among those close to the premier ahead of the difficult tax decision.
The yen languished at two-week lows against the dollar early on Friday, having come under renewed pressure overnight after an encouraging rally on Wall Street dampened demand for the safe haven currency.
The Bank of Japan bought one-year government bills at negative yields in market operations on Friday, traders said, setting a new milestone as it pushes its aggressive asset purchase scheme.
