The Japanese yen traded lower on Wednesday in Asia. Official data showed a larger-than-expected drop in December export data, while the Bank of Japan kept monetary policy unchanged as expected.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0<\/span>USD\/JPY<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>pair traded 0.3% higher to 109.65 by 11:39 PM ET (04:39 GMT). Data showed on Wednesday that the country\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>exports<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>imports<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>fell short of market expectations, with exports posting the biggest fall in more than two years.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) kept its monetary policy steady on Wednesday as expected. The BOJ maintained its short-term interest rate target at minus 0.1% and trimmed its forecast for core consumer inflation to 0.9% in the fiscal year beginning in April from 1.4%.<\/p>\n The central bank also maintained its view that Japan’s economy will continue to expand at a modest pace.<\/p>\n “Japan’s economy is likely to continue on an expanding trend through fiscal 2020,” the central bank said in its quarterly outlook report.<\/p>\n “Overseas economies are expected to continue growing firmly on the whole, although various developments of late warrant attention such as the trade friction between the United States and China.”<\/p>\n The Japanese currency received some support on Tuesday following reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its 2019 and 2020 global growth forecasts.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the\u00a0<\/span>USD\/CNY<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>pair lost 0.3% to 6.7836. China\u2019s Finance Ministry officials said on Wednesday that Beijing would\u00a0<\/span>step up fiscal spending<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>this year to support its economy.<\/p>\n The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) set the yuan reference rate at 6.7969 on Wednesday vs the previous day’s fix of 6.7854.<\/p>\n The\u00a0<\/span>U.S. dollar index<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies traded near flat at 95.980.<\/p>\n Sino-U.S. trade frictions received some attention this week. Overnight, a Financial Times reported that the White House rejected a trade meeting with Chinese officials this week.<\/p>\n U.S. equities traded lower following the report, although White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow later denied that an official meeting had been cancelled and said that \u201cthere was never a planning meeting\u201d other than the visit by Chinese Vice Premier Liu He next week.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the\u00a0<\/span>AUD\/USD<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>pair and the\u00a0<\/span>NZD\/USD<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>pair traded 0.2% and 0.4% higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Japanese yen traded lower on Wednesday in Asia. Official data showed a larger-than-expected drop in December export data, while the Bank of Japan kept monetary policy unchanged as expected. The\u00a0USD\/JPY\u00a0pair traded 0.3% higher to 109.65 by 11:39 PM ET (04:39 GMT). Data showed on Wednesday that the country\u2019s\u00a0exports\u00a0and\u00a0imports\u00a0fell short Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homepage","category-latest-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1200,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions\/1200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}