BOJ’s Ueda: No Pre-set Schedule for Rate Hikes, Won’t Declare Victory on Inflation

Ueda's refusal to commit to a fixed hiking cadence is a signal that the BOJ wants optionality rather than a glide path, which matters most for yen-sensitive carry trades and for markets that have grown used to reading the BOJ's next move off a calendar. The explicit reluctance to declare victory on inflation keeps policy data-dependent, so each incoming inflation and wage print carries outsized weight. Whether the BOJ's communication stays this deliberately vague — and how rate expectations react to it — is the open question.