Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Money Flows To Where It Is Respected, Dudes

From The Wall Street Journal:

"In terms of investor flows into and out of equities, Japan behaves very much like an emerging market, even though it's an advanced industrialized region," said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

(Link)

In other words, Japanese equities markets are not where you park your investment money. They are where you have fun -- or not, as the case may be -- with your gambling money. Gambling is all one can do in the globe's great graveyard for both value and activist investing.

To abuse another metaphor, you cannot talk to a Japan equities investor about climate change, only the weather. You cannot go into detail about how rising sea levels will eat away at the beach, spill over the seawall, undermining and finally washing away the foundation of the beach house. A Japan equities investor really only needs to know about the surf report, dude.

Which is why I continue to be amazed/appalled at the present government's infatuation with equities markets.

1 comment:

Pete Larson said...

Even on the lowest levels, I've never understood Japanese attitudes toward equities investment. They don't seem to make informed, long term investments at all, but rather merely see to generate extra money to go gamble some more.

I'm glad to read this as it confirms what I already thought.