Japan’s Ministry of Finance sold five year government bonds on Wednesday at a weighted average yield of 2.379 percent, with the lowest accepted yield at 2.384 percent, in an auction that drew 6,818.2 billion yen of competitive bids for 1,915.1 billion yen accepted, a bid to cover ratio of about 3.6.
The bond, issue number 188 with a 2.4 percent coupon maturing in September 2031, priced essentially at its coupon, a sign that the front of the JGB curve has found a level buyers accept even as the Bank of Japan’s policy path stays in question. Non competitive and special participant allotments added a further 584 billion yen or so to the total taken down.
Tokyo also used the Bangkok week for regional diplomacy: the governors of the People’s Bank of China, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of Korea held their fifteenth tripartite meeting on October 14, the standing channel through which northeast Asia’s central banks compare notes on financial stability and cross border flows. No policy commitments were published.