Bank of Japan

U.S. equity futures are little changed with the GOP Tax Plan now a done deal and no more daily "pricing in" of tax reform possible, as traders nerviously look to see if others will now be "selling the news", a preview of which we got yesterday when US equity indexes closed red across the board despite Trump's biggest legislative win to date, while bonds were spooked by the blowout in government debt needed to fund the giveaways.

As expected, The Bank of Japan left all of its various machinations of monetary policy unchanged with Kataoka the lone dissenter (preferring a more aggressive stance of yield curve control). The key line in the statement appears to be "inflation expectations have remained in a weakening phase," which is the enabling narrative of lower and moarer for longer.

Submitted by RanSquawk

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) will conclude its final policy meeting of 2017 at some point on Thursday. The BoJ is expected to leave its monetary policy settings unchanged as it has done for the entirety of 2017, which would see the Bank maintain its QQE with Yield Curve Control (YCC) and a 10-year yield target of around 0% and leave its benchmark interest rate at -0.10%.

As usual, there is no exact timing for the decision, and it could be announced any time after the start of the Tokyo lunch break at 0230GMT/2130ET/1030HKT.

Authored by 720Global's Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Recently we received the following question from a subscriber:

“If a correction in the stock or bond markets comes, the Central Banks will buy stocks with printed money, like the Japanese Central Bank, etc. Will there ever be a shakeout of the garbage and junk in the system? I am losing all confidence.” –Ron H.

A few months ago, we noted that the Bank of Japan had decided to throw every textbook out of the window and crank their plunge-protection to '11'after reports surfaced that they owned a staggering 75% of Japan's ETFs.

The BOJ first started their buying spree in December 2010 - when they held no ETFs at all - and have since accumulated some $150 billion in aggregate holdings.  The buying was all as part of unprecedented "economic stimulus" which has undoubtedly contributed to the Nikkei 225 Stock Average surging roughly 125% since December 2010.