• President-elect Donald Trump meets the press Wednesday, but markets are unlikely to get the details they are looking for on his corporate tax plans or fiscal spending program.
The topics are more likely to be the ones that have been making headlines.
"The big ones are Russia and conflicts of interest," said Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon Investments. "Number one is going to be conflicts of interest. There's so many juicy issues with his business ties and his kids. There will be lots of questions on conflicts and then Russia. Three would be Obamacare."
• Central banks' battle with the global financial crisis showed they could exert a "considerable" impact on long-term interest rates even under today's highly developed financial markets, a senior Bank of Japan official said on Wednesday.
But more research is needed on how to pin down the desirable shape of the yield curve and to what extent central banks can control long-term interest rates, said Masayoshi Amamiya, the BOJ's executive director overseeing monetary policy.
"Assessing the entire yield curve is a process of complicated and comprehensive evaluations that need to consider broad areas," he added.
After more than three years of heavy money printing failed to accelerate inflation to its 2 percent target, the BOJ revamped its policy framework in September to one that guides short-term rates at minus 0.1 percent and 10-year bond yields around zero percent.
The new framework, dubbed "yield curve control" (YCC), has been put to test as expectations of inflation-inducing policies by incoming U.S. President Donald Trump pushed up global bond yields, including those of Japan's.
• Oil edged up on Wednesday, lifted by reports of Saudi supply cuts to Asia, but gains were capped by a lack of detail about the reductions and because of signs of rising supplies from other producers.
Reference: Reuters, CNBC
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