By Lisa Twaronite, MarketWatch
TOKYO (MarketWatch) — The dollar edged up against its Japanese counterpart in Asian trading Friday, shrugging off the Bank of Japan’s decision to refrain from further easing.
As widely expected, the bank decided to keep its overnight call-rate target in a range of zero to 0.1% and maintained its basic outlook that Japan will pick up speed later this year as the nation recovers from the March disaster. Read more on Bank of Japan.
Some investors had feared that Japanese institutions would repatriate huge quantities of funds after the disaster, and that this would push the yen higher. So far, though, repatriation hasn’t been a huge factor in currency markets.
“The degree of balance-sheet stress in the financial sector still looks manageable despite worries about debt waivers by banks and payout claims on insurers, tempering the risk of a repatriation-induced spike in the yen,” said Cameron Umetsu, economist at UBS Securities Japan.
The dollar USDYEN -0.1470% rose to ¥81.75 from ¥81.61 in late North American trading Thursday. See real-time currency quotes and tools.
The dollar index DXY -0.04% , a measure of the U.S. unit against a basket of six major currencies, slipped to 75.081 from 75.106 late Thursday.
The euro USDEUR -0.0570% rose to $1.4320 from $1.4308 late Thursday, and the British pound GBPUSD +0.17% bought $1.6235 compared with $1.6231
