Sometimes it is hard not to have a wry smile at market developments and how they play out. For example the way that equity markets have returned to falling again has been blamed on the Italian bond market which has rallied since Friday. But this morning has brought a reminder that even central banks have bad days as we note that the Nikkei 225 equity index in Japan has fallen 2.7% or 609 points today. This means that the Bank of Japan will have been busy as it concentrates its buying of equity Exchange Traded Funds or ETFs on down days and if you don’t buy on a day like this when will you? This means it is all very different from the end of September when the Wall Street Journal reported this.
The Nikkei 225 hit 24286.10, the highest intraday level since November 1991—as Japan’s epic 1980s boom was unraveling and giving way to decades of economic stagnation and flat or falling prices. It closed up 1.4% at 24120.04, a fresh eight-month high. The index has more than doubled since Shinzo Abe became prime minister in late 2012, pushing a program of corporate overhaul, economic revitalization, and super-easy monetary policy.
If you are questioning the “corporate overhaul” and “economic revitalization” well so am I. However missing from the WSJ was the role of the Bank of Japan in this as it has reminded us this morning as its balance sheet shows some 21,795,753,836,000 Yen worth of equity ETF holdings. Actually that is not its full holding as there are others tucked away elsewhere. But even the Japanese owned Financial Times thinks this is a problem for corporate overhaul rather than pursuing it.
According to one brokerage calculation, the BoJ has become a top-10 shareholder in about 70 per cent of shares in the Tokyo Stock Exchange first section. Because it does not vote on those shares, nor insists that ETF fund managers do so on its behalf, proponents of better corporate governance see the scheme as diluting shareholder pressure on companies.
Intriguingly the Financial Times article was about the Bank of Japan doing a stealth taper of these purchases but rather oddly pointed out it had in fact over purchased them.Oh Well!
In early July, for example, analysts noted that over the first 124 trading days of the 245-day trading year, the BoJ had bought ETFs that annualised at a pace of ¥7tn — or ¥1tn ahead of target.
That seems to explain a reduction in purchases quite easily. Anyway, moving back to the Bank of Japan’s obsession with manipulating markets goes on as you can see from this earlier.
BoJ Gov Kuroda: Told Japan Gvt Panel He Will Continue TO Monitor Market Moves – RTRS Citing Gvt Official
$USDJPY ( @LiveSquawk )
It was especially revealing that he was discussing the currency which is not far off where it was a year ago. Mind you I guess that is the problem! It is also true that the Yen tends to strengthen in what are called “risk-off” phases as markets adjust in case Japan repatriates any of its large amount of investments placed abroad.
Putting it another way to could say that the Japanese state has built up a large national debt which could be financed by the large foreign currency investments of its private-sector.
Monetary Base
This has been what the Bank of Japan has been expanding in the Abenomics era and it is best expressed I think with the latest number.
504.580.000.000.000 Yen
Inflation
All the buying above was supposed to create consumer inflation which was supposed to reflate the economy and bring the Abenomics miracle. Except it got rather stuck at the create consumer inflation bit. Just for clarity I do not mean asset price inflation of which both Japanese bonds and equities have seen plenty of and has boosted the same corporate Japan that we keep being told this is not for. But in a broad sweep Japan has in fact seen no consumer inflation. If we look at the annual changes beginning in 2011 we see -0.3%,0%,0.4%,2.7%,0.8%,-0.1% and 0.5% in 2017. For those of you thinking I have got you Shaun about 2014 that was the raising of the Consumption Tax which is an issue for consumers in Japan but was not driven by the monetary policy.
In terms of the international comparisons presented by Japan Statistics it is noticeable how much lower inflation has been over this period than in Korea and China or its peers. In fact the country it looks nearest too is Italy which reminds us that there are more similarities between the two countries economies than you might think with the big difference being Italy’s population growth meaning that the performance per capita or per head is therefore very different to Japan.
Bringing it up to date whilst we observe most countries for better or worse ( mostly worse in my opinion) achieving their inflation target Japan is at 1.2% so still below. Considering how much energy it imports and adding the rise in the oil price we have seen that is quite remarkable, but also an Abenomics failure.
The Bank of Japan loves to torture the data and today has published its latest research on inflation without food, without food and energy, Trimmed mean, weighted median, mode and a diffusion index. These essentially tell us that food prices ebb and flow and that the inflation rate of ~0% is er ~0% however you try to spin it.
Trade
Here Japan looks as though it is doing well. According to research released earlier Japan saw real exports rise by 2.5% in 2016 and by 6.4% in 2017 although more recently there has been a dip. A big driver has been exports to China which rose by 14.1% last year and intriguingly there was a warning about the emerging economies as exports to there had struggled overall and have now turned lower quite sharply.
Comment
As you can see from the numbers above the Bank of Japan has taken central planning to new heights. Even it has to admit that such a policy has side-effects.
Risk-taking in Japan’s financial sector hit a near three-decade high in the April-September, a central bank gauge showed, in a sign years of ultra-easy monetary policy may be overheating some parts of the industry…………The index measuring excess risk-taking showed such financial activity was at its highest level since 1990, when Japan experienced the burst of an asset-inflated bubble.
One of the extraordinary consequences of all this is that in many ways Japanese economic life has continued pretty much as before. The population ages and shrinks and the per head performance is better than the aggregate one. If things go wrong the Japanese via their concept of face simply ignore the issue and carry on as the World Economic Forum has inadvertently shown us today.
What a flooded Japanese airport tells us about rising sea levels
You see Kansai airport in Osaka was supposed to be a triumph of Japan’s ability to build an airport in the sea. To some extent this defied the reality that it is both a typhoon and an earthquake zone. But even worse due to a problem with the surveys the airport began to sink of its own accord, and by much more than expected/hoped. I recall worries that it might be insoluble as giving it a bigger base would add to the weight meaning it would then sink faster! Also some were calculating how much each Jumbo Jet landing would make it sink further. So in some respects it is good news that they have fudged their way such that it still exists at all.
Here is another feature of Japanese life from a foreign or gaijin journalist writing in The Japan Times.
If you’re a conspicuous non-Japanese living here who rides the trains or buses, or goes to cafes or anywhere in public where Japanese people have the choice of sitting beside you or sitting elsewhere, then you’ve likely experienced the empty-seat phenomenon with varying frequency and intensity.
Just as a reminder Japanese public travel is very crowded and commutes of more than 2 hours are more frequent than you might think. How often has someone sat next to him?
It’s such a rare occurrence (as in this is the second, maybe third time in 15 years) that my mind started trying to solve the puzzle.