A four-month “ninja stealth rally” has driven Tokyo’s equity market to record highs, as global investment funds diversify away from China and the US and bet that a decade of structural change has transformed Japan’s corporate boardrooms.
The rally, which began shortly after the panic set off by President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcements in early April and which has been supported by a US-Japan trade deal, pushed the benchmark Topix above 3,000 for the first time in August.
Although the Topix has retreated about 1 per cent this week, it is still up more than 34 per cent since hitting a post-“liberation day” low on April 7, ahead of a 19.5 per cent gain for Europe’s Stoxx 600 index and a 33 per cent rebound in the S&P 500.