“Markets would have done without an ultra-hawkish Lagarde going into year-end. It wreaked havoc even on rate markets,” said Carlo Franchini, head of institutional clients at Banca Ifigest in Milan.
Meanwhile, European Union energy ministers meet in Brussels in an effort to agree a cap on gas prices that have inflated energy bills and stoked record-high inflation this year. “Where there’s smoke, eventually there is fire,” said National Australia Bank strategist Rodrigo Catril in Sydney.“This sort of news we’re getting plays to this view that the government will open the door for the BOJ to have a more flexible approach,” he said, “and that some of this uber-undervaluation of the yen can be reversed.”