Performance was negative across all but two of the twenty four countries comprising the MSCI World Index, but Japan stood out as being particularly weak as it finished down 4% on the week. Below we show the performance by country for all twenty four countries....
With the yen having undergone its devaluation and import prices having subsequently skyrocketed, the Japanese consumer has been left holding the bag....
For the week ending February 21st, foreign investors were net buyers of Japanese stock for the first time since the middle of January (Chart 1)....
We’ve noted on several occasions over the last week the recent outperformance of Japanese shares, so we thought it fitting to dig even deeper into the topic. In the below two tables we show the 1-week sector performance (equal weighted) and the top performing companies...
We were reminded again today of one of the unfortunate realities of Abenomics, namely that devaluing your currency when 51% of your imports are inelastic to prices causes real wages to fall....
Japanese consumer confidence today dropped to the lowest reading since December 2012, signaling perhaps (despite the nearly 100% price gain in the Nikkei over the last two years) not all is fixed in the land of the rising sun....
We saw some important Japanese statistics released today that deserved a bit of comment. The most important release of the day was Japan’s balance of payments position, which showed a third consecutive month of a current account deficit on a seasonally adjusted basis....
After years of underperforming the Japanese and global stock markets and seeing four consecutive years of substantial sales declines, Japanese bellwether Nintendo seems to be righting the ship. Investors seem to be catching on as it is the best performing stock in Japan over the...
In Part 1 of this piece we explored at a high level some of the impacts of Japanese monetary policy on on the real economy. We concluded that currency devaluation has been successful in raising import prices, but has so far been ineffectual in creating...
The Nikkei is at a six year high and trying desperately to breakout of its longstanding trading range on the Pavlovian response to BOJ money printing and a mirage created by short-term expansionary fiscal policy. But what about the real economy?...
The Japanese stock market has had a good run over the last few months (especially the price weighted Nikkei, which has risen 16% since the June low) and headline indices are close to or have already broken above their May highs on a nominal basis....
Yesterday we cited the weaker Economy Watchers Survey as the latest indicator to suggest printing money on overdrive is no more a panacea than printing money in 4th gear (as we have in the US)....
QE is rolling on in Japan, but we’re starting to see some mixed signals when it comes to the real economy, the latest of which is the divergence between the just released and widely followed Economy Watchers Survey and the Leading Economic Indicator....
We began opining on the deflationary impacts of Currency Wars back in January and some of those postulations are now coming to fruition – the latest being that the South Korean CPI today hit a level not seen since the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis....
Sony reported lower than expected sales and EPS estimates and lowered its full year profit guidance yesterday, serving as a stark reminder that Abenomincs is hardly a panacea for Japan’s struggling consumer electronics industry....
