Yen weakens broadly today after BoJ left policies unchanged and USD/JPY made new seven year high. The main focus of today's announce is the vote split. BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda won the tight 5-4 vote on additional monetary stimulus during the October 31 meeting, which included raising the annual target of monetary base expansion to JPY 80T. But this time, Takahid Kiuchi is the only board member dissented to the decision in maintaining the target. Regarding the economy, BoJ noted in the statement that "Japan's economy continues to recover moderately as a trend, although some weaknesses remain mainly in output." Yesterday, prime minister Shinzo Abe announced to call an early election for fresh mandate for his Abenomics that include postponing the scheduled sales tax hike.
Minutes of BoE's November MPC meeting will be the main focus in European session. BoE kept policies unchanged, holding main refinancing rate at 0.50% and asset purchase target at GBP 375b during the meeting. The minutes would possibly show that policy makers remained unchanged about the spare capacity in the labour market and thus, the timing of the rate hike. The vote split would catch most attention as markets expected two members to vote for a rate hike. Sterling has been under some pressure as BoE's inflation report and recent data suggested that central could only hike rates well into second half of 2015. Change in the vote split could solidify such speculations. Eurozone current account and Swiss ZEW will also be released.
From US, minutes of the October 29 FOMC meeting will be the major focus. Attention is on hints on how close Fed is to dropping the "considerable time" language. Also, markets would be eager to see if there's any hawkish shift in the tone of the minutes, which could pave the way for next year's rate hike. US will also release housing starts and building permits.