Abenomics

This weekend's Barron's cover story offers a playbook for shoring up retirement in the pandemic era. Other featured articles focus on Warren Buffett investments in Japan and stocks benefiting from COVID-19 trends. Also, the prospects for a couple of coronavirus winners, bank stocks,...

Although the yen has traded slightly higher against the U.S. dollar over the past year, exchange-traded funds, such as the WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund (NYSE: DXJ) could merit consideration by investors for another reason: Japan's consistent dividend improvement. Prior to arrival of...

Japan is the world's third-largest economy and home to some impressive equity market performances this year. For example, the MSCI Japan Index is up nearly 20 percent year to date after hitting a 52-week high Tuesday. As one of the largest developed market economies, Japan is widely represented...

Japan's Nikkei index lost 2.32 percent on Thursday after losing 1.62 percent on Wednesday. Investors were reacting to the government's decision to postpone a 2017 sales tax hike to 2019. The tax increase to 10 percent from the current 8 percent was set to kick in April of next year. In...

Japan's economy officially entered into a recession in the third quarter. Japan said that its economy contracted 0.8 percent (on an annualized basis) in the third quarter after declining 0.7 percent in the second quarter. Japan has now faced a recession four times since the global...

Standard & Poor’s downgraded Japan’s credit rating from AA- to A+. The firm justified the demotion as a sign of disapproval of Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s economic strategy – often called Abenomics. Shares of the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (NYSE: EWJ), WisdomTree Japan...

After Japan released reported worse than expected GDP numbers earlier this week, the country has technically entered into an economic recession. But what exactly is going on in Japan right now? Benzinga asked a few prominent analysts to explain: Slow Growth Economist and author of “...

ETF Outlook for Tuesday, June 3, 2014: iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index ETF (NYSE: FXI) The May HSBC manufacturing PMI rose to a four-month high last night in China when it came in at 49.7. A reading above 50 represents expansion and the May number is getting close to that level once again...

This weekend in Barron's online: how to play the merger boom, as well as the prospects for Time Inc., Global Brass & Copper, Barnes & Noble and more. Cover Story "Top 10 Ways to Play M&A" by Jack Hough. Mergers are at near-record levels, says this week's cover story in Barron's, and...

In 1980, inflation at the consumer level (the Consumer Price Index) was running above 14 percent. The situation was so bad that then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker had declared war on inflation and was raising interest rates every time you turned around. The problem was that inflation had risen from...

Stocks in Japan dropped to a seven-week low overnight on reports that the world's third-largest economy grew much slower than expected in the second quarter. Inflation also ran at a higher rate than anticipated, raising fears that the extraordinary expansionary policies of the both the Bank of...

Abenomics, the colloquial term for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's agenda to rejuvenate the world's third-largest economic, could get a boost this weekend. That is when Japanese voters head to the polls to decide which political party will gain control of Japan's upper house of parliament...

Recent data indicate the Japanese economy is improving. Confidence in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plans to weaken the yen and spark inflation in the world's third-largest economy are among the reasons why investors have poured billions of dollars into Japan ETFs this year. Through the end of...

Futures Slightly Higher On Yen Weakness U.S. equity futures rose slightly in early pre-market trade although the story was all about the yen overnight. The yen continued to weaken against the dollar overnight as the USD/JPY rose above 101 on new reports that Japanese citizens are starting to buy...