by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Building up a big pile of dry powder.
No central bank of a developed country equals the Bank of Japan in trying to manipulate the stock market up by buying equities. The BOJ has done this for years. With breath-taking ineffectiveness.
So on July 28, the BOJ announced another stock market pump-up scheme: it would nearly double its annual purchases of equity ETFs from about ¥3.3 trillion to ¥6 trillion ($60 billion).
Hedge funds and other speculators expected for the BOJ to visibly throw its weight around in the stock market, and hopes were riding high that the Nikkei would surge, or at least rise in a visible manner.