The latest and largest equity dilution — approx. $5.6B; 30 percent s/o — by Nomura (JP: 8604) (NMR: 6.69 +8.78 percent) has sent its shares down 16 percent to 573 yen in Tokyo ($6.35 at ¥90.3/$1) following an earlier rout in NY...

The DPJ’s rise (and the LDP’s fall) is no longer debate material, but a welcome reality. As expected, the yen exhibited strength, and looks poised to test 92 yen...

Interesting developments in the Nikkei ahead of the parliamentary election at the end of this month, which at this point looks as if it will finally bring an end to LDP rule...

In 1996, in The Future of Capitalism, Lester Thurow observed the following...

The Nikkei, like many other benchmark indices, is hardly the volatile, motion sickness inducing headline producer that it was of months past. But no matter how hard I’ve tried, I just haven’t been able to turn myself into a green shoots market cheerleader.

For Japan, the 1990s are commonly referred to as the "lost decade." Those that know me are aware that I look beyond that and actually regard a quarter-century as the appropriate "lost" duration...

Pricey, and Japanese stocks, are typically not heard together in the same sentence. However, since last September’s market rout, earnings have deteriorated to the point that the Nikkei 225 is trading at over 175x forward earnings ... proceed with caution.

About a year ago today, I published a weekly Nikkei outlook discussing whether the Nikkei was headed to 13,000 or back to 12,000. Suffice to say that much has happened since then...

The yen is still “relatively” strong, but it has weakened by a pretty significant amount against the dollar, nearly 10 points, in recent weeks.

Former Japanese Finance Minister Nakagawa should never have been at the press conference that did in his career, and now has the Japanese press gone mad discussing “reputation risk?”