Japanese equities are where liquidity has to go because the Bank of Japan cannot tighten without blowing up Japanese government bonds. @Globalflows notes the Nikkei just made an all-time high and frames it as the credit cycle at work. x.com
GrowthTurtle
Data Science PhD & IEEE Fellow, Ex-Two Sigma
Japanese equities should surge as a deliberately weakening yen pushes capital out of government bonds into stocks, a view shared with Hugh Hendry, who sees USD/JPY at 200 then 300 and the Nikkei at 160,000. Per Hendry, the Bank of Japan wants the yen to collapse to force money from JGBs into equities after 26 years without real wage growth, and offshore demands for dollar collateral drive yen selling. A yen at 250+ would also make Japan cheaper than China, which it already beats on quality. … Show more
The yen keeps weakening despite repeated intervention, with dollar-yen back at 156. The US has no choice but to fund as many rescues of the yen as the BoJ wants, since otherwise Japan would be forced to sell its US Treasuries. The BoJ meets on the 18th, and it is unclear what it can even say. x.com x.com
Japanese equities are under attack from every direction after Japan and the US intervened to rescue the yen from a 40-year low. A stronger yen crushes export giants' overseas profits, while surging bond yields raise borrowing costs, the AI trade that drove the Nikkei to records unwinds, and fears grow over Japan's debt pile. The Nikkei has fallen about 16% in a month; the currency rescue may have broken the stock market. x.com
Rising Japanese bond yields threaten expensive US tech stocks by pulling Japanese capital home. With yields near 30-year highs, Japanese investors can earn attractive returns domestically, giving them reason to shift some of the $2.9 trillion Japan holds in US securities. Weaker Treasury demand would raise US yields and crush expensive tech through higher discount rates, and even a small shift could create enormous pressure. The IMF has warned Japanese bond repricing could spill over globally. … Show more
The yen is strengthening sharply toward ¥153-154 as the Bank of Japan hikes rates and intervenes, starting to unwind the global carry trade funded by cheap yen. That is not a normal FX move but a systemic margin call on every leveraged position funded in yen, with the BOJ now playing its own game rather than following the Fed. x.com
Japanese stocks face more selling if the Bank of Japan steps in to support the yen, because a stronger yen hurts the country's exporters. Topix fell 1.3% today on those worries. The last time this happened, Korea's KOSPI hit its eighth circuit breaker of 2026 and the Nikkei lost over 2,600 points. The yen is the key thing to watch. x.com
The yen stays weak because intervention cannot fix Japan's deeply negative real rates and a sluggish central bank. Japan deployed up to $95.6 billion over two days, and joint intervention with the US Treasury briefly lifted the yen about 2.8%, but about 85% of that rally has evaporated, with USD/JPY back near 159. The yen has lost 30.6% against the dollar in five years. Intervention did warn speculators off the 160-164 zone, and yen net shorts fell $8.865 billion in a week, the most since 2014. … Show more
AI borrowing is pushing rates up because hyperscalers will pay any price for money, so rates must keep rising until they hurt price-sensitive borrowers. Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle sold about $194 billion of bonds by early July, 79% more than in all of 2025, and the 10-year yield touched 5.33%, the highest since 2002. Julien Garran warns a downturn may not lower long yields much, with big deficits everywhere while Japan and China step back from Treasuries. x.com
Japanese equities face an eventual collapse as decades of QE and similar tools, which masked demographic-driven productivity decline, come due through currency and bond collapses, with Japan first because it used them first. Per @puckrin, the yen is at its weakest since 2024 even after a hike to 1%, the highest since 1995, as carry trades into US assets persist despite $73bn of intervention. A faster drop in Japanese government bond values should cap the Nikkei. x.com x.com
The Japanese yen is weakening again despite the coordinated Bank of Japan and US Treasury intervention, having given back about 38% of the manufactured gain. More government intervention looks likely soon as the currency slides. x.com x.com