Japanese stocks have had a nasty summer, sliding by around 10% amid global jitters over China. But it isn't just the state of Japan's giant neighbour that has investors unnerved. "Abenomics", Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to revive the economy after two decades of stagnation, "appears to have stalled", says the Financial Times. A key plank of Abenomics is a vast quantitative-easing (QE), or money-printing, programme, designed to produce inflation of 2%.
The Bank of Japan has been buying around $55bn of bonds a month. That's less than the monthly $85bn the US central bank bought under its QE programme, but in an economy three times smaller. Yet core inflation, which strips out volatile fresh food prices, has just fallen into negative territory for the first time in three years.
There is also little sign so far of inflation expectations and wages rising. In the year to July, earnings rose by just 0.6%. "Consumers still appear shell-shocked" by last year's rise in the consumption tax (VAT), says the FT. That "knocked the wind out of the recovery".
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Meanwhile, progress on structural reform has been relatively slow. One key task, says The Economist, is to prepare the population for more immigration to make up for the shrinking workforce. "Keeping low-paid foreigners out is one reason why, in the five years to 2012, about half a million Japanese stopped work to care for their ageing parents."
Still, the gloom looks overdone. The Bank of Japan could boost its QE purchases as soon as next month, reckons Capital Economics. That should mean further yen weakness, giving Japan's exporters another boost. Meanwhile, although the structural reforms remain a work in progress, lower corporate taxes and improvements in corporate governance are bullish. State pension funds are also being encouraged to buy equities.
Japan enjoys "an impressive lead" in industries such as medical devices, robotics and high-performance materials, says Fidelity's Tom Stevenson in The Sunday Telegraph. It also spends more on research and development than anywhere bar South Korea. On top of that, says Capital Economics, Chinese data are set to improve as stimulus measures work their way through, and the yen's fallcould gain impetus if American interest rates rise further or faster than currently expected. The consultancy thinks the Nikkei could gain another 30% by the end of 2016.
Sign up for MoneyWeek's newsletters
Get the latest financial news, insights and expert analysis from our award-winning MoneyWeek team, to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.
After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.
His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.
Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.
The five insurance policies you should have
Is Donald Trump putting the US dollar in danger?
