Tokyo stock market surpasses Shanghai by $6.3 trillion
Foreigners respond favorably to Japan’s efforts to increase corporate value
Foreign investors account for 70% of trading volume
Overseas capital’s ‘departure from China’ benefits
The market capitalization of Japan’s Tokyo stock market, which has been enjoying a great boom this year, surpassed China’s Shanghai stock market for the first time in three and a half years to rank fourth in the world. Japan’s ‘Corporate Value Up Program’ to increase shareholder value is receiving great response from foreign investors, and it has been revealed that foreigners have been buying Japanese stocks worth 700 billion won every day this year.
According to the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) on the 21st, the market capitalization of stocks listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) as of the end of last month was $6.34 trillion, an increase of 3% compared to the end of last year, surpassing the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) to rank fourth in the world. occupied. During the same period, SSE’s market capitalization decreased by 7% to $6.0433 trillion, falling to 5th place. This is the first time since June 2020 that TSE has surpassed SSE’s market cap. As a result, the Japanese stock market has become the second largest market after the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Nasdaq Exchange, and Euronext (a merger of the Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels stock exchanges).
The ‘big money’ in the Japanese stock market are by far foreign investors. According to Bloomberg News, foreigners net purchased an average of about 725 billion won per day in the Japanese stock market from January this year to the 15th of this month. During the same period, the average daily net purchases by foreigners in Korea’s KOSPI and China’s Shanghai Composite Index amounted to only 293.8 billion won and 45 billion won, respectively.
It is known that foreign investors account for 70% of Japanese stock trading volume. Thanks to foreign buying, Japan’s representative indices, the Nikkei Stock Average and Topix Index, soared 14.64% and 11.24%, respectively, from the beginning of the year until the 20th.
Among the world’s major stock markets, the Japanese stock market is particularly booming due to the effects of Japan’s ‘low price-to-book ratio (PBR)’ reform, expectations for improved corporate performance, and the ‘exodus of foreign capital from China’. It is interpreted as the result of a combination of reflected profits and other factors. In order to resolve the undervaluation of the Japanese stock market, TSE has required listed companies to disclose improvement policies and implementation plans to increase capital profitability and growth potential since March last year. As a result, it was confirmed that 664 companies, or 40% of the prime market where 1,656 companies were listed by the end of December last year, had disclosed related information. The Center for International Finance stated on the 13th, “TSE’s measures to improve corporate value are assessed to have played a role in changing the landscape of the Japanese stock market.”
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun predicted that the movement of funds from China will continue for the time being. The newspaper reported on the 21st, “As the Chinese economy is unlikely to recover soon, funds are expected to move to countries such as Japan, which are less affected by the Chinese economic downturn and have independent growth factors.”
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.