BOJ widely expected to hold rates at 1.25% at today's meeting, with money markets pricing around a 98% likelihood of no change

• A majority of economists surveyed by Reuters anticipate another hike in December.
• Alongside the decision, the BOJ will release its latest outlook report containing board members' medium-term forecasts for real GDP and core CPI.
• The bank had just hiked rates last month, lifting them by 25bps, in a widely expected move, though the vote was not unanimous as board members Asada and Sato, both Ueda-appointed, dissented.

A hold priced near certainty on the heels of a recent 25bp hike fits the established pattern for gradualist normalisers: sequential moves followed by a pause meeting, with the burden of signal shifting from the decision to the statement, the outlook report, and the governor's press conference. In such pause meetings the market-moving element has historically been the median of the board's GDP and core CPI forecasts rather than the rate itself, since revisions to the medium-term price view are what the bank uses to telegraph the pace of the next move. The prior split vote is the detail worth tracking: dissent of that kind from recently appointed members tends to mark the early edge of a hawkish drift inside the board, and whether it widens, narrows, or is smoothed over in the minutes is the cleaner read on the committee's centre of gravity than the unanimous-looking headline decision. The survey consensus for a further hike later in the year sets up the usual sequence: guidance language on underlying inflation and wage dynamics, any shift in the neutral-rate framing, and then the sensitivity of the next CPI and wage rounds. Front-end JGB and yen reaction in comparable episodes has tended to hinge on whether the pause is framed as data-dependence or as satisfaction with the current stance, the distinction between a delayed next hike and a lower terminal path.