It's time to make a killing in Japan

As Japan's recovery gets under way, now is the time for investors to buy into the market, says Merryn Somerset Webb. And there's more to this story than stocks.

You are probably losing money while you are reading this. Even if you have your money in the best of the UK's savings accounts you will be earning 5.7 per cent in interest. Yet inflation is running at 4.4 per cent. After that, you are making a mere 1.3 per cent a year and that's before tax.

After tax, lower-rate taxpayers are seeing their spending power fall and higher-rate taxpayers are seeing it all but collapse every day their cash buys less and less.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.