The Topix index jumped about 0.9% while Australian shares fluctuated. US equity futures edged lower after a rally on Friday, when the S&P 500 Index rose for the first time in four days and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 saw the biggest one-day gain since November as Google parent Alphabet and Netflix surged. Contracts for European stocks climbed.
“The Bank of Japan will continue to be that central bank that stands on its own and tries to almost sing its own tune,” Katrina Ell, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, said on Bloomberg Television. “Domestic demand in Japan still is incredibly soft, so they are trying to resist that tightening urge that we’ve seen from other developed and even developing economies.”
Yet as optimism rises, US financial conditions have become less restrictive, raising another potential challenge to efforts to tame inflation that may give policymakers reason to rethink their views.