Investing.com - The Australian dollar held flat and the Japanese yen reversed course in Asia on Tuesday as investors digested the minutes of the Bank of Japan August board meeting and data from Australia.
USD/JPY traded at 105.98, down 0.04%, while AUD/USD traded flat at 0.9282.
Bank of Japan board members at the August meetingsaid the focus for policymakers should be the underlying trend in prices as they assess whether sustained 2% inflation is possible by 2015, minutes released Tuesday showed.
"Members expressed the recognition that, even though monthly figures for the CPI tended to draw attention in terms of the BoJ's conduct of monetary policy, it was important to accurately gauge the underlying trend in prices."
The Bank of Japan in April 2013 launched an aggressive monetary easing with the 2015 target. At the August meeting, the board decided by a unanimous vote to leave the bank's policy target unchanged as expected - and did the same in September.
In Australia, the NAB business confidence and business conditions survey showed August confidence at plus 8, down from plus 10 in July and conditions at plus 4, down from plus 8 in July.
NAB forecasts are broadly unchanged. "Rates still on hold till late 2015, with the move then up. Only a sharp deterioration in the labor market (not expected) could see rate cuts," NAB said.
At the same time, July housing finance in Australia rose 0.3%, below the 1.0% month-on-month rise expected.
Overnight, the dollar firmed against most major currencies after investors shrugged off Friday data revealing that the U.S. economy picked up far fewer payrolls in August than markets were expecting.
Last week, data showed the U.S. economy added 142,000 jobs in August, far less than the expected increase of 225,000.
The US Dollar Index, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, was flat at 84.45.