Enzio von Pfeil

Nomura's Individual Investor Survey for August: Caution Prevails

Steven, another reason the Japanese investor is turning cautious has to do with the increasingly awful policy mix: base money contracted by 18% yoy in July, and next year the MoF has to increase VAT: on 7th July, the government decided that by 2011, it wanted to eliminate its primary deficit.

Sounds like there is gloom ahead; I am looking for a similar bout of market violence as we had in May - when investors finallly moved out of denial and accepted that Fed Funds have to keep climbing. This time, the "moving out of denial" will be that investors see that Japan's growth outlook is NOT rosy at all, courtous of the dark clouds of the policy mix just discussed.