(Barron’s) Moments before Tokyo trading opened yesterday, the Zero Hedge blog fired out a tweet that said it all: “Only 20 minutes until Japan pretends it has a market.”
Since April 2013, the Bank of Japan has steadily morphed into a giant hedge fund. First, it cornered the bond market, buying up more than twice the debt the government issues each year. Now, it’s dominating stocks with gargantuan purchases of exchange-traded funds, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs and others. By some measures, the BOJ is a top-10 holder of almost all Nikkei 225 companies – a kind of stealth nationalization of Japan Inc.
