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from Anatole Kaletsky:
The radical force of ‘Abenomics’
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the cockpit of T-4 training jet at the Japan Air Self-Defense Force base in Higashimatsushima, Miyagi prefecture, May 12, 2013. REUTERS/Kyodo
'The 3.5 percent gross domestic product growth announced by Tokyo Wednesday suggests that Japan may be the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Since the Tokyo stock market hit bottom exactly six months ago, the Nikkei share index has soared almost 80 percent. Meanwhile, the yen has experienced its biggest six-month move against the dollar. All these events appear linked to the election of Shinzo Abe and the regime he has installed at the Bank of Japan.
Even after 20 years of stagnation, Japan remains the world’s third-largest economy, with a 2012 GDP of $6 trillion, equal to France, Italy and Spain combined. Financiers, business leaders and economists everywhere are starting to ask the obvious question: Is Japan finally taking the truly radical action required to fix its economy and end its “lost decades”?
This, however, is the wrong question. It confounds two very different issues – which need to be carefully distinguished to understand what’s happening in Japan.
from Breakingviews:
Abenomics pulls Japan from its post-Lehman slump
By Andy Mukherjee
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies have beaten back the Japanese economy’s post-Lehman blues. Breakingviews' Abenomics Index was at its highest level in March since September 2008. And that was before the Bank of Japan launched its bold money-printing pledge.
from Breakingviews:
Three-digit yen no longer a one-way bet
By Andy Mukherjee
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
The yen is no longer a one-way bet. The Japanese currency has slumped to 100 against the dollar for the first time in four years. That’s a 16 percent slide since Shinzo Abe’s landslide election victory in December. At the time, Breakingviews predicted his victory would herald a three-digit yen. But there are good reasons to be sceptical about a further decline.
from Global Investing:
Japan’s big-money investors still sitting tight
More on the subject of Japanese overseas investment.
As we said here and here, Japanese cash outflows to world markets have so far been limited to a trickle, almost all from retail mom-and-pop investors who like higher yields and are estimated to have 1500 trillion yen ($15.40 trillion) in savings. As for Japan's huge institutional investors -- the $730 billion mutual fund industry and $3.4 trillion life insurance sectors -- they are sitting tight.
If some are to be believed, the hype over outflows is misguided. Morgan Stanley for one reckons Japanese insurers' foreign bond buying may rise by just 2-3 percent in the next two years, amounting to $60-100 billion. Pension funds are even less likely to re-balance their portfolios given large cash flow needs, the bank said.
from Global Investing:
Tokyo Sonata calls the tune for investors
The jury may be out on whether Messrs. Abe and Kuroda will succeed in cajoling the Japanese economy from its decades-long funk but the cash is betting they will. Domestic and foreign investors have stampeded for Tokyo equities, and Morgan Stanley has been crunching the numbers.
Since 2005, Japanese investors built up a 14 trillion yen (over $140 billion) portfolio of foreign equities. But between January-March 2013, they offloaded a third of this -- about $39 billion. Going back to July 2012 when they first started bringing cash home, the Japanese have sold $53 billion in foreign equities, or 36 percent of equity holdings.
from Global Investing:
Why Abenomics is leading to a squid shortage in Japan
"Abenomics" -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's aggressive reflationary fiscal and monetary policy -- is widely praised for injecting optimism into the world's third largest economy and making Tokyo stocks the best performing equity market in the world this year.
However, in Japan, something odd is happening as a result of Abenomics -- a big shortage of squid.
from Breakingviews:
Return to glory days may elude Japan’s automakers
By Antony Currie
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
The weakening yen is good news for Japan’s automakers. The more than 20 percent drop in the currency’s value against the dollar since early October will boost profit from overseas sales - and probably market share, too. A return to the glory days of 2006, though, is likely to prove elusive.
from Breakingviews:
IMF crowd should cut Japan some slack
By Christopher Swann
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
The crowds gathering for the International Monetary Fund’s spring meeting should cut Japan some slack. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policies are in for a drubbing at the shindig in Washington, DC. IMF officials have been bemoaning Japan’s “risky” fiscal stimulus while the U.S. Treasury has been grumbling about the weaker yen. But Japan was right to act.
from Global Investing:
Amid yen weakness, some Asian winners
Asian equity markets tend to be casualties of weak yen. That has generally been the case this time too, especially for South Korea.
Data from our cousins at Lipper offers some evidence to ponder, with net outflows from Korean equity funds at close to $700 million in the first three months of the year. That's the equivalent of about 4 percent of the total assets held by those funds. The picture was more stark for Taiwan funds, for whom a similar net outflow equated to almost 10 percent of total AuM. Look more broadly though and the picture blurs; Asia ex-Japan equity funds have seen net inflows of more than $3 billion in the first three months of the year, according to Lipper data.
from Global Investing:
No one-way bet on yen, HSBC says
Will the yen continue to weaken?
Most people think so -- analysts polled by Reuters this month predict that the Japanese currency will fall 18 percent against the dollar this year. That will bring the currency to around 102 per dollar from current levels of 98. And all sorts of trades, from emerging debt to euro zone periphery stocks, are banking on a world of weak yen.
Now here is a contrary view. David Bloom, HSBC's head of global FX strategy, thinks one-way bets on the yen could prove dangerous. Here are some of the points he makes in his note today:
