Japanese equities remain compelling for investors

This year has not been kind to Japanese equities. But this looks wrong-headed given the encouraging backdrop.

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Higher wages should bolster consumption
(Image credit: Credit: Sean Pavone / Alamy Stock Photo)

This year has not been kind to Japanese equities. The Topix index fell by 9% from its January peak, reflecting "an unhelpful shift in investor mood", says Fidelity's Tom Stevenson in The Daily Telegraph. Investors have been worried about Japan because it has a trade surplus with the US and is therefore highly exposed to Donald Trump's protectionism. What's more, the yen is widely deemed a safe-haven currency, so global market upheavals tend to strengthen it, making Japanese exporters less competitive. These factors have hit sentiment hard this year and foreign investors have headed for the exit.

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Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.

Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.

Marina is trilingual and lives in London.