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...
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....
