The Bank of Japan held steady on its interest rate policy today, keeping its target overnight lending rate in a range of zero to 0.1%.
The central bank did not announce any new monetary easing measures, however. The economy remains sluggish following the earthquake and tsunami in March.
Japan’s markets took a hit today on corporate earnings, including a huge loss reported by Tepco, which runs the nuclear plant that was damaged in the tsunami.
The iShares MSCI Japan Index Fund (EWJ), which includes the Japan-listed stocks of Toyota (TM), Honda (HMC), Mitsubishi Financial (MTU) and Canon (CAJ), among others, is trading down over .7% today.
The FTSE RAFI Japan Portfolio (PJO) is trading flat Friday, while the WisdomTree Japan Hedge Equity Fund (DXJ) trades down over .7%.
For MarketNewsVideo.com, I’m Kristin Bianco.