Investors greeted the gains made by the Liberal Democratic Party of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in the weekend’s Upper House election by bidding the Topix up by 3.8% on Monday. Although much of the immediate rally was powered by short-covering, international investors will naturally ask themselves whether Abe’s reinforced mandate, and his post-election pledge
“In Japan…nothing makes any sense. They’re very polite, but you feel like a joke is being played on you the entire time.” Bill Murray, Actor and Comedian It could be plausible that Bill Murray’s quote is attributed to investing in Japan. It has been a graveyard for many an investor over the years, with many
With the Nikkei 225 breaking through the 20,000 point level last week and Japanese stocks broadly having put on around 15% this year, many investors will be trying to ascertain whether that is as good as it gets or a sign of things to come. There is such a mixed bag of factors to weigh
This morning a Japanese government official announced that Japan’s public pension fund will change its asset allocations. The Government Pension Investment Fund (“GPIF”) is 127.3 trillion Yen in size (USD 1.2 trillion) which is very large and, according to Bloomberg, is roughly equal in scale to the Mexican economy. For many years we have chatted
