Yen rallies broadly on BoJ's unchanged policy decision: April 29, 20169

Market Review - 28/04/2016 23:17GMT 

Yen rallies broadly on BoJ's unchanged policy decision

The Japanese yen rallied across the board on Thursday after the Bank of Japan surprised the market and opted to make no changes to its monetary policy. 

The Bank of Japan released its policy statement, which said 'keeps monetary policy steady, maintains 80 trln yen base money target and 0.1 pct negative interest rate; to keep base target, asset buying unchanged made by 8-1 vote; BoJ's Kiuchi opposed decision on base target, asset buying; BoJ's decision on negative rates made by 7-2 vote; BoJ's Sato, Kiuchi opposed decision on negative rates.' 

Despite briefly edging up to 111.88 in Asian morning, the greenback tumbled sharply to 109.39 immediately after BoJ's rate decision.Dollar continued to ratchet lower and further fall to 117.92 in European morning. Later, price staged a short-covering rebound to 108.73 in New York morning but eventually hit an intra-day low at 107.88 in New York afternoon, completing its biggest daily fall since 2011. 

Although the single currency dropped to session low at 1.1296 in Asian morning, price pared its losses and rallied to an intra-day high at 1.1368 in early European morning on dollar's weakness. Later, renewed selling there pressured the pair lower to 1.1310 in New York morning before staging a rebound. 

The British pound tracked euro's intra-day movements and rallied from Asian low at 1.4524 to 1.4619 in European morning before retreating to 1.4541. However, renewed buying there lifted the pair and cable rose to an intra-day high at 1.4623 in New York afternoon. 

On the data front, Gross domestic product (GDP) in the U.S. showed a larger-than-expected deceleration in the first quarter to the slowest pace in two years, according to official preliminary data released. 

In other news, BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said 'Japan economy continues to recover moderately as a trend; Japan economy likely to expand moderately as a trend; inflation expectations rising as a whole in somewhat long-term perspective but weakening somewhat recently; consumer inflation seen flat for time being but price trend to steadily rise towards 2 pct; consumer inflation to hit 2 pct during fiscal 2017.' 

Data to be released on Friday: 

New Zealand building permits, business confidence, Australia producer price index, France GDP, CPI, producer prices, Germany retail sales, U.K. Gfk consumer confidence, Italy unemployment rate, CPI, producer price index, Eurozone CPI, unemployment rate, U.S. personal consumption, personal income, adjusted consumption, personal consumption expenditures, employment cost, Chicago PMI, the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index, Canada GDP, producer price index and raw materials prices.