{"id":440523,"date":"2026-10-21T12:40:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T05:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/boj-policymaker-himino-warns-of-upside-inflation-risks-as-japan-nears-2-target-440523\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T12:40:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T05:40:05","slug":"boj-policymaker-himino-warns-of-upside-inflation-risks-as-japan-nears-2-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/boj-policymaker-himino-warns-of-upside-inflation-risks-as-japan-nears-2-target-440523\/","title":{"rendered":"BOJ policymaker Himino warns of upside inflation risks as Japan nears 2% target"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Underlying inflation is quite close to BOJ&#8217;s 2% target<\/li>\n<li>Expect underlying inflation to converge to levels consistent with BOJ&#8217;s target<\/li>\n<li>Medium, long-term inflation expectations continue to heighten<\/li>\n<li>Financial conditions remain accommodative<\/li>\n<li>Real interest rates remain low<\/li>\n<li>Delay in adjusting policy could see inflation risks materialise, hurt the economy<\/li>\n<li>Upside risks to prices are high<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The remarks from BOJ deputy governor, Ryozo Himino, above are not anything that we haven&#8217;t heard of from the central bank. It mainly juts reinforces the narrative that\u00a0Japan is getting closer to achieving its long-sought inflation target and that\u00a0the central bank now has to be careful about letting things run too hot.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The most striking part of his comments is arguably the\u00a0warning about delaying policy adjustments. But even then, there&#8217;s no explicit hint that they are going to push for another rate hike sooner rather than later. And that is well reflected in the market pricing as well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">As things stand, traders are virtually ruling out a move at the  October meeting but are pricing in roughly 74% odds of another rate hike in December.\u00a0That is a rather telling contrast, especially when you consider Himino&#8217;s warning that delaying policy adjustments could allow inflation risks to materialise and ultimately hurt the economy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">That doesn&#8217;t mean that policymakers are not serious about their remarks. I would say that in Himino&#8217;s case,\u00a0his remarks aren&#8217;t necessarily a push for an October move.\u00a0Rather, they reinforce the argument that the BOJ cannot afford to sit on its hands for too long. But that&#8217;s about it. They are neither an explicit confirmation about a move in December as well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">In any case, the takeaway for the yen is that further BOJ tightening remains firmly on the agenda.\u00a0October may be a foregone conclusion for markets, but December is a different story.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\n<p>                            This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Underlying inflation is quite close to BOJ&#8217;s 2% target Expect underlying inflation to converge to levels consistent with BOJ&#8217;s target Medium, long-term inflation expectations continue to heighten Financial conditions remain accommodative Real&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}