The yen sinking to even deeper lows. Short sellers driving Japanese bond yields through the central bank’s target. Stocks on a roller coaster ride and credit investors running for the sidelines.
These are some of the scenarios investors envisage as Haruhiko Kuroda doggedly clings to ultralow interest rates in his final nine months as Bank of Japan governor. His clash with markets looks set to intensify as runaway inflation forces global rates higher while he tries to resist long enough to entrench price gains in Japan.
"It all comes down to the BOJ’s policy and the weakness of the yen,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, a strategist at Asymmetric Advisors, who has tracked Japanese markets closely for three decades. "How the BOJ navigates monetary policy and inflation will impact everything from stocks to credit and provide opportunities to short JGBs — it will keep happening until their view on rates changes.”