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Latest Financial and Business News

  • Business
    Reuters

    UPDATE 1-Australia's central bank holds rates as expected, waters down tightening bias

    Australia's central bank held interest rates steady on Tuesday and watered down its tightening bias, signalling greater confidence that inflation is moving back to its target as the economy slows. Wrapping up its two-day March policy meeting, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) kept rates at a 12-year high of 4.35% for a third straight meeting, and said it was not ruling anything in or out on policy. Markets had wagered heavily on a steady outcome given inflation has held at two-year lows and economic growth slowed to a crawl.

  • Business
    Reuters

    BOJ plans to reduce JGB purchases after policy shift

    The Bank of Japan (BOJ) announced on Tuesday it will reduce the amount of government bonds it will purchase after ending its negative interest rate policy and abolishing yield curve control (YCC). According to the new guidelines, the BOJ will significantly reduce the top-end of the range of the amount of bonds the BOJ is planning to buy each time at its bond buying operation.

  • Business
    Reuters

    UPDATE 2-Bank of Japan ends negative rates, closing era of radical policy

    The Bank of Japan ended eight years of negative interest rates and other remnants of its unorthodox policy on Tuesday, making a historic shift away from a focus of reflating growth with decades of massive monetary stimulus. While the move will be Japan's first interest rate hike in 17 years, it still keeps rates stuck around zero as a fragile economic recovery forces the central bank to go slow in any further rise in borrowing costs, analysts say. The shift makes Japan the last central bank to exit negative rates and ends an era in which policymakers around the world sought to prop up growth through cheap money and unconventional monetary tools.