Japan’s Nikkei share average extended its strong rally to top a new 21-year peak on Thursday, ahead of a long weekend, with investors piling into miners and companies such as Honda Motor and Sony on robust earnings prospects.
The Nikkei ended up 0.5 per cent at 22,539.12 after reaching a high of 22,540.25, its best close since late June 1996.
The wealth held by the world’s billionaires jumped by nearly $1 trillion in 2016, and they now have more money than the GDP of the entire European Union, according to a new report.
The population of billionaires rose by 145, or about 10 percent in 2016, to 1,542 billionaires, according to the report by UBS and PwC. The wealth held by those billionaires increased from $5.1 trillion to $6 trillion, according to the report. And Asia now has the most billionaires in the world, surpassing the U.S. for the first time with a new billionaire minted on average every other day in 2016.
For many years in the last two decades the Japanese equity market has been taken as a textbook case of secular bear market. Since the historical high of 1989 the Nikkei 225 stock index of Japan has been subdued by a prolonged downtrend that hit its lowest low in 2009 after losing about 80% from the high. Intermediate rallies had developed meanwhile, some of them were consistent, like the four years recovery started in 2003, but the although considerable +130% that followed did not reverse the secular trend that prevailed again thereafter whit a new deep fall.
China’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group is reportedly set to open its first brick-and-mortar department store in its hometown Hangzhou next April. The space, called “More Mall,” symbolizes the “New Retail” concept, which has long been advocated by the company.
According to reports in the Chinese media, the new mall will occupy 40,000 square meters of space across five floors. It will curate brands that already have an established presence on Alibaba’s two major online platforms: Tmall and Taobao Marketplace.
Tokyo-based Nomura said it expects the North Korea tensions to stay controlled, even after the rogue state on Tuesday fired a missile over Japan.
"We see today’s provocation as in line with our base case for the [Korean] peninsula – that tension will remain elevated for some time, but also remain contained," a team of Nomura research analysts said in a Tuesday note led by Hong Kong-based economist Minoru Nogimori.
Japanese labour market conditions remain incredibly strong, according to data released by the Japanese government today.
Japan’s job openings-to-applicants ratio came to 1.52 in July on seasonally adjusted terms, rising 0.01 of a point from June and improving for the fifth straight month, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said on Tuesday.
The ratio measures the number of jobs available compared to the number of active job seekers. That means that for every 100 people seeking work in July, there were 152 jobs available, the most since February 1974. July’s ratio exceeded that seen in the early 1990s, during Japan’s economic bubble era.
Grab, the ride-hailing company competing with Uber in Southeast Asia, has pulled in $2 billion of new financing from existing investors Didi Chuxing, the company that defeated Uber in China, and SoftBank.
The latest round of funding comes from Japan’s Softbank and China’s top ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing. Grab said Monday that it expects another $500 million will come from other existing and new investors. Its last announced cash injection was in September when it raised $750 million led by Softbank, whose chief executive Masayoshi Son is Japan’s richest person and a self-styled tech visionary.
– The economy continues to decelerate gradually to a more sustained speed of around 5% in the medium term. It is expected to slow in Q2 17, but also to transform itself toward more consumption and services
– Beyond the growth objectives, the authorities are looking to curb financial excesses and to diversify in and outflows channels. State Owned Enterprises (SOE) restructuring remains the weak link of the current reforms
