Though mood is cautious, China's markets opened up with the Shanghai Composite Index up 2%, an exact retracing of what it surrendered last week. The Nikkei was also up 1.7% and Asia-Pacific outside Japan MSCI index traded 0.8% higher. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index gained 0.8%. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.7% and South Korea’s Kospi was essentially flat.
Reuter's reported:
The BOJ began its own two-day meeting on Monday, and is expected to keep policy unchanged after stunning markets by adopting negative interest rates in late January.
However, its board could discuss whether to exempt $90 billion in short-term funds from the BOJ's newly imposed negative rate, people familiar with the matter said, after the securities industry warned that investment money would be driven into bank deposits.
The Fed and BOE are also seen standing pat at their respective meetings later this week, in the wake of the ECB's move last week to expand its easing program.
"I don't think investors are expecting anything drastic from the BOJ, especially given the fact that they are meeting before the FOMC and will be reticent about making a big aggressive gamble ahead of a Fed meeting," said Stefan Worrall, director of Japan equity sales at Credit Suisse.
China data on Saturday showed further weakness in much of the economy, but also contained a few bright spots.
The January and February manufacturing numbers were bleak, the weakest since 2008. The dollar held steady with the index at 96.175 and traded against the yen at 113.78 while oil prices backed off a bit from last week's gains.
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