As in the U.S., Japan’s central bank has become the market for government bonds

Bond markets in Japan are getting whiplashed as traders try to guess who will be buying how much of what when. Which in turn is pushing around prices of U.S. and European government debt. At the end of the first quarter, the Bank of Japan owned 20.1% of Japanese government bonds outstanding and the bank’s total planned purchases for the 2015 fiscal year amount to 42% of the total issuance