Japan 06 (Aug 17 - Dec 24)

Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby winston » Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:45 pm

The Bank of Japan Went on a Record ETF Buying Binge

The central bank spent a record amount on Japanese exchange-traded funds during March

The Bank of Japan spent 833 billion yen ($7.8 billion) on exchange-traded funds tracking the country’s shares last month, the largest amount ever according to data back to 2010.

Haruhiko Kuroda’s bank is now ahead of its scheduled goal to spend about 6 trillion yen a year on ETFs.


Source: Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ying-binge
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby winston » Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:14 am

Chart of the day: Back to zero for Japan bonds

by Nicole Elliott

In 2009, the Bank of Japan set its policy balance rate at 10 basis points.

But since 2016, the rate has been kept at minus 10 basis points, and the central bank targets the yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds at zero per cent.

This is done to encourage economic growth and stave off deflation, though it has been a long and difficult fight.

We turn our attention to the yield on 20-year Japanese government bonds, which hovered at around 55 basis points last year.

Trading down steadily this year, it is now testing the psychologically important 50-basis-point level with the lowest weekly close since late 2016.

Breaking this will probably set off a move to even lower yields, at a faster pace, to retest the record low at zero per cent.

Source: SCMP

http://www.scmp.com/business/global-eco ... apan-bonds
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby behappyalways » Tue May 08, 2018 7:36 am

Number of children in Japan shrinks to new record low
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/07/heal ... index.html
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby winston » Wed May 16, 2018 6:12 pm

Will the Rally Last in Japan ETFs?

by Sanghamitra Saha

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average has advanced about 9% since March 23.

Net foreign buying became positive (worth 207 billion yen of cash equities) in April after three months of net selling.

Japan’s economy is forecast to have shrunk for the first time in two years in the first quarter of 2018 due to muted private consumption and softer export demand.

The latest surge in oil prices which could put an upward pressure on inflation.

Japan currency-hedged ETFs:-
1. iShares Adaptive Currency Hedged MSCI Japan ETF DEWJ,
2. iShares Currency Hedged JPX-Nikkei 400 ETF HJPX,
3. WisdomTree Japan Hedged Financials Fund DXJF and
4. Franklin FTSE Japan Hedged ETF FLJH


Source: Zacks

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rally-la ... 04206.html
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby behappyalways » Sun Jul 08, 2018 4:58 pm

Hidden masses

Japan is finally starting to admit more foreign workers

But it does almost nothing to integrate them


by FUSSA and KAWAGUCHI

WHEN Sakura no Mori hospital and care home in Kawaguchi, 20km north of Tokyo, hired its first foreign workers six years ago, some of the patients would shout “gaijin” (“foreigner”) to summon them; others were wary of having anything to do with them at all. Today Verlian Oktravina, a 26-year-old Indonesian nurse, says the Japanese she works with are more curious than hostile.

Yoko Yamashita, the director of the care home, says patients can see that foreign workers are as good as Japanese ones: “They accept them.” She herself, she admits, was initially sceptical about hiring immigrants, but has since changed her mind.

Acceptance of foreign labour is gradually increasing in Japan, one of the world’s most homogenous countries, where only 2% of residents are foreigners, compared with 16% in France and 4% in South Korea.

A poll conducted last year found opinion evenly split about whether Japan should admit more foreign workers, with 42% agreeing and 42% disagreeing. Some 60% of 18-29-year-olds, however, were in favour, double the share of over-70s.

Whatever Japanese think of them, foreign workers have become a fact of life, at least in cities. There are 1.3m of them, some 2% of the workforce—a record. Although visas that allow foreigners to settle in Japan are in theory available only to highly skilled workers for the most part, in practice less-skilled foreigners are admitted as students or trainees. The number of these has been rising fast. Almost a third of foreign workers are Chinese; Vietnamese and Nepalese are quickly growing in number.

More gaijin are on their way. In June the government announced that it would create a “designated skills” visa in order to accept 500,000 new workers by 2025, in agriculture, construction, hotels, nursing and shipbuilding.

More significant than the number, perhaps, is the government’s willingness to admit lower-skilled workers openly, rather than through the back door. “It is not the Berlin Wall coming down, but it is a significant shift,” says David Chiavacci of the University of Zurich.

Help wanted

Pressure from business lies behind the change in attitudes, both societal and official. Over the past 20 years the number of workers below 30 has shrunk by a quarter. In addition, the ageing population is creating jobs that few Japanese want at the wages on offer, most notably as carers. There are 60% more job vacancies than there are people looking for work.

Industries such as agriculture, construction and nursing are increasingly dependent on foreigners. Some 8% of Sakura no Mori’s staff are foreign, as are 7% of workers at 7 Eleven, Japan’s biggest convenience-store chain.

More exposure to foreigners, through tourism, has reassured Japanese that they can get along with them, reckons Hidenori Sakanaka, a former immigration official who now heads the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, a think-tank, and has long advocated widespread immigration. Fears that more foreigners would bring more crime have proved unfounded (although many landlords still refuse to rent to them).

Attracting the foreign workers Japan needs will not necessarily be easy. Language is a big barrier. Highly skilled immigrants, for whom the government has made it easier to get permanent residency, reducing the required period of residence from five years to one, are not required to speak Japanese. But only a handful of companies, such as Rakuten, an e-commerce giant, work in English. Lowlier workers must pass a Japanese exam and are not allowed to bring their families, even under the new “designated skills” visa.

Business practices are another barrier. Workers on student and trainee visas are vulnerable to exploitation. Firms where promotion is based on seniority rather than merit and where long hours are the norm will find it hard to attract workers.

Japan also needs to do more to help integrate foreigners, says Iki Tanaka, who runs Youth Support Centre Global School, a private institute in Fussa, a city of 60,000 people west of Tokyo. A teacher at the school is coaching a group of foreign students, including Nepalese and Filipinos, in Japanese. The goal is to get them into state secondary school.

Ms Tanaka suspects that the government makes little effort to help foreigners integrate because it does not really want them to stay. It requires many of those already present to renew their visas frequently, for example.

The case of nikkeijin, immigrants of Japanese extraction, is instructive. They have the right to move to Japan based on family ties and so provide an easy way around the restrictions on low-skilled migrants.

In theory they should be easy to integrate; many are familiar with the culture and speak some Japanese. In practice, however, the government has made no effort to help them. The children of nikkeijin do worse in school than those of other immigrants.

The clearest sign of the government’s ambivalence came in 2008, when the economy took a turn for the worse and unemployment rose. It offered nikkeijin free flights and other subsidies to move back to their home countries if they promised not to return.

Accepting mainly skilled workers has allowed Japan to get away without any integration policy until now, says Mr Chiavacci. But as the number of immigrants rises, and especially as more low-skilled workers are admitted, this omission threatens to bring about some of the very concerns that prompted the government to restrict immigration in the first place, such as ghettoisation and poverty.

“With the right policies, we could transform ourselves from the weirdest nation in the world on immigration to a model for how to do it,” muses Mr Sakanaka.

Source: The Economist
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby winston » Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:14 pm

Bank of Japan Offers Unlimited Bond Buying After Yields Jump

By Masaki Kondo and Chikafumi Hodo

Central bank’s offer to buy unlimited bonds drew no sellers
Yield curve bear-steepens before 40-year debt sale on Tuesday

Source: Bloomberg

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/asian-st ... 27741.html
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby winston » Thu Aug 02, 2018 10:38 am

Why Japan may spark the next crisis

The country has total debt of more than ONE QUADRILLION YEN (around $10 trillion) pushing its debt-to-GDP ratio to a whopping 224% - that puts it ahead of financial basket case Greece, whose debt-to-GDP is around 180%.

Japan spent 24.1% of its total revenue (appx. 23.5 trillion yen) last year servicing its debt – both paying down principal and interest.

The BOJ printed yen to buy basically all of the $9.5 trillion of government debt outstanding. When it ran out of bonds to buy, BOJ started buying stocks. Now it’s a top 10 shareholder in 40% of Japanese listed companies.

Most recently, the central bank has started “yield-curve control,” which basically means they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure the government doesn't have to pay more than 0.1% interest.

Yields increasing from 0.03% to 0.11% may not sound like a big deal to you. But think about what it means for Japan…

The country already spends a quarter of its tax revenue just to service the debt. They cannot afford even the tiniest increase in interest rates.

If interest rates in Japan went to, say, just 1%, the nation’s annual debt service would literally exceed all of government tax revenue.


Source: Sovereign Man
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby behappyalways » Mon Aug 06, 2018 3:00 pm

2018.08.05【文茜世界周報】美貿易行動綑綁軍售 日本只能花錢消災
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIiAa-D ... AU&index=5
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby winston » Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:08 am

Do these guys know what they are doing?

BOJ's architect of 'shock and awe' plots retreat from stimulus

By Leika Kihara

Interviews by Reuters with a dozen people familiar with the bank's thinking reveal for the first time that there were plans to raise rates twice this year.

Last week, the central bank took more subtle action, rolling back parts of its policies that have hurt banks, paralyzed Japan's bond market and distorted stock prices even as they failed to ignite healthy inflation.

"The reflationists have become a minority, which means the BOJ is turning more hawkish."

A few more years of ultra-low rates could drag down weak regional banks. Explicitly raising rates may trigger an unwelcome increase in the yen that could cool the export-reliant economy and anger politicians.


Source: Reuters

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bojs-arc ... 25988.html
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Re: Japan 05 (Apr 15 - Jun 17)

Postby behappyalways » Sat Aug 11, 2018 3:22 pm

Japan's economy rebounds in the second quarter
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45139317
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