A Kyodo survey puts Shinzo Abe on course for a two-thirds majority win

Reuters have picked up on an survey election survey by Kyodo news agency. The poll ahead of the Lower House election taken between 15-17th Oct had Abe’s LDP winning around 280 of the 465 seats. With the Komeito coalition partner, he should get the 2/3 majority.

One of the new parties tipped to give Abe a run for his money (the Party of Hope) has slipped back in recent polls.

While it looks good for Abe going into Sunday’s election, Kyodo noted that around 40% of voters polled were still undecided.

The Reuters story is here.

Market wise, this story might be playing out in yen pairs today as the market will be seeing less risk from the elections. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been keeping an eye on yen option vols to see if there is any risk hedging going on. Looking at the numbers today, there’s certainly not much showing up in the vols to suggest we’ll see any big unwinding moves over/after this weekend. That said, GBPJPY is showing higher levels of vol than EURJPY and USDJPY but that might be more related to GBP in general and probably due to Brexit.

JPY option vols 18 10 2017

JPY option vols 18 10 2017

 

Ryan Littlestone

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