Sushi lunch
Easy money in Japan
Good morning, my serene water lilies. This is your Stock Market Rundown for June 30th, 2023. Thanks for being here with me. Let’s get started:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: SUMO-SIZED PROFITS 🏯
The Japanese stock market has been on a tear lately thanks to the Bank of Japan sticking to a super-easy monetary policy. The rounds of tightening we’ve seen from the US Fed hit capital markets like repeated punches to the solar plexus. But the Japanese central bank has kept investors unbothered, moisturized, and flourishing, by keeping the benchmark rate in negative territory.
With company profits improving and consumer spending rising, you might be asking how you too can buy into Japan Inc. The largest Japan ETF available to US investors is the iShares MSCI Japan ETF, which provides diversified exposure to the Japanese market. Its top holdings are Japan-based global behemoths like Toyota Motor Corp, Sony Group, and Mitsubishi Corp. Need an industrial robot? They’ve got you, fam.
But caveat emptor: it can be risky to hop on a trend, especially since Japan only recently threw off a painful deflationary phase. One thing rock-bottom rates can’t fix is Japan’s demographic crisis. The country pairs the lowest birth rate in the developed world with the highest life expectancy, which has kept average population age creaking upwards. And since centenarians don’t make the most productive workers (ageism alert!) labor shortages are a problem.
Resulting wage pressure could cause inflation, which would ring the alarm for the central bank to raise rates. And that could pull the plug on the Nikkei’s karaoke party.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
A billionaire portfolio manager who was in the media last year handwaving that Fed hikes would plunge the US economy into recession, now says “I was a little early.” Take the L, bud.
McKinsey is in mea culpa mode after getting its sticky fingers into shady shit like dealing drugs and hobnobbing with outlaw regimes. The consulting firm is now hiring an army of ethics consultants. Simply avoiding obviously shady shit might be cheaper.
Bryden, afternoon shift manager at the local Olive Garden, isn’t the only one struggling to retain enough staff to keep the unlimited breadsticks hitting the tables. Restaurants have been forced to use technology to compensate for turnover problems.
Russia uses trained dolphins to protect its naval forces. Here I thought the porpoises that jump through hoops at Marineland were smart. Meanwhile, the Russians have been developing the Jason Bourne of marine mammals.
That’s it for today, see you bright and early Monday morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe