By Kevin Buckland
TOKYO (Reuters) - The yen surged against the dollar on Tuesday after the Bank of Japan said it would review its yield curve control policy and widened the trading band for the 10-year government bond yield in an unexpected tweak.
While it kept broad policy settings unchanged - pinning short-term JGB yields at -0.1% and the 10-year yield around zero - it widened the allowable band for long-term yields to 50 basis points either side of that, from 25 basis points previously.
The dollar tumbled as much as 2.78% to 133.11 yen, a level last seen on Aug. 16, before last trading 2.62% weaker at 133.345. It had been slightly stronger at about 137.40 yen ahead of the policy announcement.
Eyes will now be trained on BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda's media briefing later in the day for additional hints about a pivot away from ultra-easy policy. Most BOJ watchers had expected no changes until his 10-year term finishes at the end of March.
"This was really out of the box," said Bart Wakabayashi, branch manager at State Street in Tokyo.
"We're seeing them start to test the market about the exit strategy," he added. "It will depend on Kuroda's comments later today, but we could see a break below 130. It's very much within reach this year."
The 10-year JGB yield jumped to 0.46% from the previous cap at 0.25%. It pulled equivalent U.S. Treasury yields higher as well, with the 10-year soaring to the highest this month at 3.711%.
The U.S. dollar index sank though, dropping 0.31% to 104.30, bringing it back to the middle of its trading range this month of 103.44-105.90. The index measures the greenback against the yen and five other major peers, including the euro and sterling.
It had been moving toward the top of that range before the BOJ announcement as investors continued to digest the Federal Reserve's message of higher interest rates for longer.
The euro was flat at $1.0609, holding on to Monday's 0.23% gain following an upbeat reading of German business morale. Earlier that day, if had languished at the lowest since Dec. 13 at $1.05755.
Sterling was also little changed at $1.21435, holding close to the previous session's nearly two-week low of $1.2120.
New Zealand's dollar dropped 0.6% to $0.6326 after a big decline in a survey of local business confidence.
The Australia dollar slumped 0.52% to $0.6664, and touched $0.6662 for the first time since Nov. 29.
Earlier, the Aussie had shrugged off minutes of the Reserve Bank of Australia's Dec. 6 meeting that showed policymakers considered a half-point hike and a pause before opting for a quarter-point rate increase.
Those minutes reinforced the "uncertain outlook" for policy, providing an additional weight on the Australian dollar, said Sean Callow, a strategist at Westpac.
"Unease over China's haphazard COVID policy changes also seems to be keeping a lid on AUD/USD," Callow added.
(Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Bradley Perrett)
In a year where workplace buzzwords like “quiet quitting,” “quiet firing” and “the Great Resignation” were popularized, Glassdoor’s word of the year in the U.S. may come as a surprise. It also may come as a bit of a bummer to the millions of Americans who have come to embrace remote work. The word is “return-to-office,” or RTO.
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In a post announcing the company’s word of the year, associate economist and data scientist at Glassdoor Richard Johnson wrote that the word “encapsulates various themes in the labor market and workplace this year,” and that “as the world opened back up for business, many companies looked to return to how things were before the pandemic.”
But employees, who often turn to Glassdoor to shed light on the not-so-great happenings behind company walls, are not necessarily on board with executive desires to have things return to pre-pandemic business as usual. The tension between employees and employers around the topic of RTO seems to be what led to the uptick in mentions of the term.
“The tug-of-war between employees wanting to stay remote and employers wanting them back in the office resulted in the share of employee reviews discussing their company’s RTO policy doubling since 2021 (+122 percent),” Johnson wrote.
A looming recession is likely what catalyzed the conversation of RTO to begin with.
“Many companies were more lenient towards employee demands during a tight labor market, but the emerging threat of a recession saw employers taking their power back,” Johnson wrote.
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Though “return-to-office” was chosen as word of the year by Glassdoor, it wasn’t the word that saw the biggest jump in popularity on the site based on U.S employee reviews between January 1, 2021 and October 18, 2022, when the data was collected. The word “hybrid” jumped 388%, “inflation” leapt 326% and “recession” was up 133%.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: ‘Return-to-Office’ Was the Dirty Word in Glassdoor Reviews for 2022