For 15 months, between March 2013-June 2014, foreign investors were net sellers of Japanese equities. It seems, however, the tide has turned. Over the last few weeks foreign investors have started accumulating Japanese shares (first chart below). For those invested in Japan this is a...
It is a widely accepted view that Japan’s economy will contract in Q2 and today’s data almost ensures that. This is due to the sequential fall in consumer spending as a result of demand being brought forward into Q1 to avoid higher consumption taxes....
Japan’s GDP grew at a 5.9% annualized rate in Q1, beating expectations for growth of 4.2% and bringing hope that Japan will be able to avoid a tax-increase-induced slowdown in Q2 and beyond (1st chart)....
Last week we analyzed here one reason why the yen has not fallen more, despite all the QE and investor expectations for a much weaker yen....
The Japanese leading indicator for March (which is ironically released 40 days after month end) dropped to the lowest level in a year today (first chart). We understand that this is ”old” data that was simply predicting a slowdown from the sales tax increase in...
After undergoing a fairly rapid depreciation from the end of 2012 to mid-2013 the yen has traded in a more or less sideways channel and has recently been parked between 101-104 per USD....
With Japanese equities having horribly underperformed of late (only 25% of Japanese stocks have outperformed the MSCI World Index YTD), we might be seeing the signs of some early bottom feeding by foreign investors (first table below)....
With Japan’s consumption tax increase in full swing (sales tax rates rose from 5% to 8% in April) we’ve seen a lot of speculation as to the effects of the tax increase on the Japanese economy....
With yet another month of data indicating falling real wages in Japan and amid further currency depreciation in China, we got to thinking that maybe these two countries are in a race to win the most exemplar financial repressor award for 2014....
It’s no surprise that Japanese shares have been hammered lately. Japan is the worst performing major market so far in 2014 and the Nikkei is down about 10% from its recent high in USD terms. That, however, is not the entire story. When we categorize...
Foreigners have been net sellers of Japanese stocks in 2014 but that trend may have seen its climax. Data released today showed that foreigners were actually net buyers of stocks for the week ending April 18th, which marks the second week of net buying out...
Despite introducing by far the largest QE program of any central bank, the BOJ’s unlimited quantitative and qualitative easing program is failing to have the desired effect on stocks. Indeed, the popular price-weighted Nikkei index is about 11% from it’s recent high last December....
Today saw the release of Japanese industrial production, the Markit Manufacturing PMI, and housing starts. Unfortunately this latest package of data does little to alter the ongoing trend of a deteriorating Japanese economy. Indeed, industrial production saw the largest one month drop since the earthquake...
In the latest piece of evidence that Abenomics is having the effect of suppressing real income and expenditure, new data out today reveals that real income (red line, right axis) is down 1.3% YoY and real personal consumption expenditure (blue line, left axis) is down...
For the week ending March 14th, foreign investors in Japanese stocks were net sellers by the largest single-week amount since weekly records began in 2001. This is concerning not only because of what it implies for the Nikkei (2nd chart), but also because of what...
