BOJ program not as big as it first seemed

The BOJ ETF buying program offsets a different program

Ok, this is how it shakes down.

The BOJ announced an additional 300B in annual ETF purchases beginning in April.

This is to offset a program that started in 2002 to buy financial shares. Those shares are slated to be sold slowly beginning in April and continuing for 5 years.

Now, that selling program has been extended to 10 years so the pace of selling will be 300B per year. So the new program simply offsets the old one (although with a shift from financials to companies investing in CAPEX and human resources).

The existing 3T ETF purchase program is unchanged.

So on the net, there isn't really any fresh spending. Although you could argue the 300B was expected to be sold, but now it isn't.

It's still some minor easing and the bond maturity extension is meaningful and foreign-currency loans as collateral is a change as well. This looked like a major change at first but it's not really that big.

I got a bit ahead of myself.