USD/JPY Forecast Dec. 22, 2011, Fundamental Analysis

The USD/JPY pair dropped early Wednesday after the BOJ’s interest rate decision came in line with expectations, where confidence increased in the financial market pushing the lower-yielding currencies to the downside.

The Bank of Japan kept the interest rate steady at 0.10% and lowered the Japanese economy assessment for the second consecutive month, while the central bank did not change the policy at the last meeting in 2011.

The U.S. economy will release the final GDP reading for the third quarter at 13:30 GMT, the annualized Gross Domestic Product for the third quarter is expected to remain unrevised at 2.0%.

The Personal Consumption for the third quarter is also expected steady at 2.3% as well as the Core Personal Consumption Expenditure to hold at 2.0%.

The U.S. economy will also issue its weekly initial claims, where the number of people filing for first-time claims for the state unemployment insurance dropped to 366 thousand last week.

At 14:55 GMT, the United States will issue the University of Michigan Confidence for December, where the previous reading was 67.7 and it’s expected to rise to 68.2.

The U.S. leading index for November will be released at 15:00 GMT and expected to slow to 0.3% from 0.9%.