Bloomberg with a "people familiar with discussions" story
According to said people, the BOJ are likely to move away from references to the ¥80tn annual level of purchases in their monetary policy statements over the coming months.
They want to focus on their new objective of managing the yield curve and thus making this more important than the actual amounts they will buy.
The BOJ are now concentrating on keeping JGB yields in a tight range around zero and no policy action is expected from the BOJ meeting next week. Instead, the market will be looking for changes to the framework of monetary policy and how they might manage QE going forward.
On the face of it, if this is true, it may mean that the BOJ buy a lot less in QE, if they only step in when yields stray too far. They could also potentially have the market doing their job for them as the market will likely fade sizeable moves in yields as traders will be sniffing a free lunch knowing that the BOJ will effectively be their stop loss.
It's something to think about if it comes to fruition and it might be Yen positive if it's viewed as cutting QE purchases.
