Why I'm the last of the Tokyo bulls

Merryn Somerset Webb explains why things aren't as bad as they may seem in Japan - and suggests a brave investment for fellow bulls.

A friend, Edward Cartwright of KGR Capital, is in Japan at the moment. He has just sent me an e-mail saying he is finding it a bit depressing. He can't see much going right. The markets have gone nowhere for months and smaller companies with a domestic bias in particular are performing horribly.

Sentiment has turned nastily negative as a result. Fidelity's Japan Smaller Companies fund saw its assets grow from $900m (£453m) to $2.5 billion in 2005 when everyone loved Japan. Today the fund is back down to $900m.

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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.