Land of the rising funds: Japan’s ressurection

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24 Apr 2014

When Japanese prime minster  Shinzo Abe  addressed the World Economic Forum in  Davos in January, he announced the country  was “about to break free from chronic  deflation”.  “It is not twilight,” he added, “but  a new dawn breaking over Japan.”

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When Japanese prime minster  Shinzo Abe  addressed the World Economic Forum in  Davos in January, he announced the country  was “about to break free from chronic  deflation”.  “It is not twilight,” he added, “but  a new dawn breaking over Japan.”

Yet the Centrica Combined Common Investment  Fund (CCCIF) is in the process of  reducing  its Japan exposure after an equity  review in 2012, which concluded a better  country balance was needed within its global  equity portfolio. In 2012 the fund had UK at  20%, Japan at around 15% and the US at  around 22%, meaning it had almost 60% of  its portfolio in just three countries. To combat  this concentration, it is currently selling  down its passive exposure to UK and Japan.

CCCIF chief investment officer Chetan  Ghosh explains: “About 40% outperformance  relative to developed markets is  about as good as it [Japan] has ever got and  that is what we experienced in late 2012/early  2013. While it may outperform further it is  certainly at the extremes already in terms of  the outperformance it has realised. We are  phasing the reduction over time.”

Russell Investments investment strategist  Wouter Sturkenboom says companies’ profitability  has been outweighed by the J-curve  because imports have become more expensive,  particularly following the Fukushima  Daiichi nuclear disaster which led to Japan  shutting down power plants and importing  more energy, which in yen terms became  more expensive.

“We are still waiting for exports to pick up to  a large enough extent to outweigh the impact  from high import prices,” says Sturkenboom.  “Restarting the nuclear power plants  would be a double plus because exports  would hopefully pick up, energy imports  would go down and the trade balance would  pick up.”

Hit or miss?

While they have been mooted, many believe  the BoJ’s own tapering plans are quite a long  way off because it is likely to be driven by  approximately  the same driver as the Fed  and the Bank of England, which is wage  inflation.  “As soon as that picks up that is when you  will see pressure on BoJ to start tapering QE  and the wage inflation story is really only at  its starting point,” says Sturkenboom.

Bearing in mind the VAT hike and the fact  inflation is still rising robustly the BoJ will  consider tapering “at the earliest” in 2016,  according to Vail.

“In the meantime, the  question is will the BoJ do more?” he adds.  “They might do something like credit facilities  or extend the duration of purchases. But  they have a gigantic bazooka and there is no  need to fine tune a bazooka; it’s a bazooka  for crying out loud.”

Sturkenboom meanwhile, believes it is too  early to call whether Abenomics has been a  success because the true test will come in the  next two years when the stimulus starts to  filter  into the real economy. At this point, he  says, it will become clear whether or not the  inflation in Japan is ‘cost-push’ inflation imported  from abroad because of the cheaper  yen, or ‘demand-pull’ inflation created by excess  consumer or business sector demand.

He questions: “Can it use the momentum  from monetary stimulus into 2014/15 to  boost the real economy, create more wage  growth and boost investment from the corporate  sector to create an embedded inflation  story that will break away from the deflationary  trends of the past and allow the Japanese  economy to grow in line with the rest of the  developed world?”

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