Overnight

The BOJ and RBA left their monetary polices unchanged Tuesday not really surprising anyone as the ASX 200 fell 0.52% and the Reserve Bank of Australia announced it was leaving cash rates at 1.5% with labor markets tame and inflation not yet a problem.

The WSJ reported Japan’s central bank largely held fire in a policy update on Tuesday. The BOJ said it would keep its deposit rate steady at -0.1%, and would continue to target a zero yield for 10-year Japan government bonds. Its only notable move was to push back the timeline for achieving 2% inflation by one year, to fiscal 2018. Japan’s Nikkei was largely unchanged—down just 0.2%—following the BOJ news and the yen slipped 0.1% against the dollar.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was trading up 1.2% and the Shanghai Composite was up 0.4%. Both were getting a lift from the release of better-than-expected manufacturing PMI data coming out of China. The official manufacturing PMI rose to 51.2 in October from 50.4 in September, adding to signs that the world’s second-largest economy is stabilizing. A measure below 50 indicates a contraction. China’s official nonmanufacturing purchasing managers index, a measure of activity outside factory gates, edged up to 54.0 in October from 53.7 in September.

The Japanese central bank held rates at -0.1 percent and the pace of bond purchases unchanged, but cut its core consumer inflation forecast for the year ending March 2018 to 1.5 percent from 1.7 percent.  The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of currencies, traded at 98.461. Gold stayed mostly unchanged ahead  of the Fed meeting this week with the yellow metal trading at $1,277.50 an ounce in the spot market. In the U.S. consumer spending rose and it's now expected the economy the fourth quarter is on an  annualized growth rate of 2.7%, based on the Atlanta Federal Reserve's GDP model out Monday.