Japan's Nikkei surpasses 1989 all-time high
cnbc.com> The rally has also been supported by a weaker yen, which has shed about 6% against the dollar so far this year and seems on track to drop to to 33-year lows touched late last year.
We just got back from Tokyo and the prices for everything were crazy low. Ordered a bunch of sushi at a mall sushi place in Kyoto for what it would cost for Chipotle in DC. It was a huge shock when we flew back through SF and paid $13 each for a taco truck burrito in Millbrae.
The Japanese folks I’ve spoken to are pretty grumbly about the weak yen, though.
The US has become extraordinary expensive compared to most of the world. Or to say it differently the dollar is likely quite overvalued.
The other side of this coin is that exports are very difficult. My dad is a nut farmer and the business is completely unsustainable right now. Expenses are through the roof while simultaneously crop prices are at all time lows due to the collapse of exports. It's nuts.
> It's nuts.
Is this an industry saying?
A good brand name.
How come nuts prices aren’t low for consumers though?
Businesses have a tendency of raising prices when costs rise but not lowering prices when costs drop.
The price of the almonds at Trader Joe's was $8 per pound for many years, and now it is $6 per pound.
We Canadians used to regularly talk about how cheap the US was, and load up on gas, food, beer, cheese and all the rest when staying in cheap hotels and getting cheap meals with cheap entertainment (concerts, sporting events, etc.). If you could be bothered electronics were cheap, cars were cheap, clothes were cheap, etc. etc.
In the last ~12 months I have been floored how expensive life in the US is now. I was just down two weeks ago, and everything was either the same dollar number as Canada or higher, but it's in US dollars.
I don't know how people are doing it.
This was a very very brief moment when the CAD appreciated. Are you sure you didn’t just end up coming of age at a particular moment, specifically 2006-2012?
Because otherwise the exchange rate has been about where it is now to substantially worse for the rest of the data set.
I read their comment differently than you did. I think the point they are making about exchange rates goes like this:
The dollar amount in CAD was normally higher than the equivalent in USD. For example, next to the bar code on the back of a paperback, it would list the prices as $15 USD or $20 CAD. Many other goods have similar price differences.
Lately in the US it seems like a lot of prices are increasing to the same number value, despite the exchange rate.
> Are you sure you didn’t just end up coming of age at a particular moment, specifically 2006-2012?
I'm 42, so, ah, no.
What I mean is that basically since forever things were cheaper in the US than in Canada.
Gas? 25%-50% cheaper. Cheese (of course) 50% cheaper. Electronics, cars, clothes, hotels, beer, food at restaurants, etc. etc.
Now, everything is more expensive in the US than Canada.
They are doing it with wage growth. Inflation is likely a result of high employment levels. There are more jobs than candidates.
Personally I believe it is due to the last of the boomers retiring. Economists/analysts are not used to thinking about demographics and they have a blind spot on this ever more important topic.
Supermarket prices are up 25% since 2020: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-prices-grocery-inflation-b.... People’s wages are not 25% higher.
For the poor, nominal wages are much higher. Bottom quintile saw 20% higher wages. https://www.dallasfed.org/cd/communities/2022/0808
Bottom decile even higher
Awesome, wish they straight up outpaced it though
More people are employed however.
"They are doing it with wage growth. Inflation is likely a result of high employment levels. There are more jobs than candidates."
There is limited real wage growth and it is mostly concentrated at the bottom end.
There might be more jobs that "qualified" candidates. Companies are still being very picky. A lot of the jobs/employment numbers we are seeing are including more part-time or low wage positions than in the past.
The inflation is mostly because of the increase in money supply in my opinion. The economy is fragile enough that the Fed is talking about a rate drop soon despite inflafion.
More like credit growth inspite of high interest rates.
You really think this is the primary cause not a side effect?
Are boomers retiring? Both of my parents are near the traditional retirement age but are planning on working for another decade. Even boomers who do retire often get part time jobs.
They wish they could but they lost their shirts in 08-09 thinking their ATM, I mean houses, would continue to allow them to do nothing and get rich like it had for the prevuois 25 years.
Worst. Generation. Ever.
~disgruntled X
Overvalued by a lot, we expected a full global crash in which so far in history the USA has bounced back first. But instead we pumped out 20% of all USD ever printed, which created a slow burn. As long as the keep rates where they are or higher, we should recover. I personally think rates are too low, and this last week has proven that is the right view, the market can still remain delusional far longer than I can. The longer the unrealistic expectation of rates falling at all this year, just increases the risk we'll have trouble. Cheap cash is gone, you gotta earn it now. Downvote all you like, doesn't change the fact that rates need to stay up or we risk a similar situation as the early 80's.
I mostly agree the market has entirely unrealistic expectations of rates going lower. I think the cause is structural due to the tight employment market which is not going to change any time soon. The period of low inflation and low rates is over and the market analysts are living in the previous decade.
The Fed needs an excuse to return ZIRP. There's no way around it as the economy is now designed around cheap money and inflationary valuations. And for this specific reason I present to you AI.
Generative AI has potential and there are fun experimentations, but nothing game changing for the vast majority of businesses at the moment. People always overestimate short term change a new technology bring. Sure long term as with the internet it will change everything. But for now in the broad picture of the economy this is a toy and the FED doesn’t care about it. “AI” looks more like a Hail Mary for VC before being definitely crushed by high rates at this point.
I somewhat agree with you on some points. Am not all in on AI becoming a main driver for business productivity (not yet at least) but that's not really up to me to decide. It could very well be a flop but we could be calling it no more revolutionary than the fax machine and be wrong about it just like Paul Krugman's infamous prediction in 1998.
The tech boom was as much influenced by silicon valley VC money as it was by the technological solutions themselves. AI fits into the same playbook. It's only rational to look at it in the same lens. The only difference is that tech has hit its limits as we are seeing with the layoffs but AI presents itself as a new vehicle to continue with the inflation.
The reason the Fed care about AI in my view is because it's new a conduit for letting loose the money printer. Once AI begins increasing economic output they'll have their missing piece for ZIRP. Without this, opening the floodgates again will be a catastrophic mistake as the inflation won't match the productivity output.
S&P 500 has hit an ATH not long ago with high rates. The economy seems to be working quite well. There is not even a crash in residential real estate. The commercial real estate is going bust, but there are funds just waiting for current owners to go out of business and buy up the buildings for pennies on the dollar.
"S&P 500 has hit an ATH not long ago with high rates. The economy seems to be working quite well."
The market is not the same as the economy. We are in fact seeing rising consumer debt defaults across various types. Jobs data is not as good as it seems since there are higher percentage of part-time and low wage jobs in the numbers. Consumer spending is stagnating or down in many sectors. Hiring in consumer discretionary industries like restaurants has stagnated too. I'm not sure the economy looking that good, despite the optimism (inflation even?) in the market.
The S&P 500 rally is just 7 stocks and is not a true representative of the real economy anyways. I think you have my argument confused. I'm not saying the U.S is supposed to be in a recession or headed into one.
Yes I have the same sentiment.
It used to be that rate going up would make asset price go down but the market got used to it.
Now the rates go down and asset prices go up and the rates go up and asset prices stay the same but rent increases.
> There's no way around it as the economy is now designed around cheap money and inflationary valuations.
Eh, I say just trudge right through it. The economy will adapt, as it always does. In this case I think it would be for the better.
The economy needs the next boom to save the day from every fiscal problem we are facing today. It's the only answer that has worked since 2008.
"I mostly agree the market has entirely unrealistic expectations of rates going lower. I think the cause is structural due to the tight employment market which is not going to change any time soon."
They expect it to go lower because they got used to it over the past decade or so, and the Fed has said they are expecting a rate drop. It's not unrealistic if the people who make up the rates say it will happen. Of course that doesn't make the decison to do so reasonable.
> entirely unrealistic expectations of rates going lower
The Fed has already announced back in December that they are planning to cut rates to 4.6% by the end of 2024 (of course that might change). The bond market consensus is somewhere between 4.25% - 4.75% so how is it “entirely unrealistic”?
The rates need to go lower: government debt is too expensive to service at these rates.
Good!
Govt debt growth needs to slow. Too much money spent by govt is being wasted on undeserved transfer payments, creating do-nothing jobs and has been a huge contributor to inflation.
Real efficiency is falling because of overspending in the public sector. Fewer people making things everyone wants in the private sector and more people with govt jobs digging holes and filling them in creates inflation.
> As long as the keep rates where they are or higher, we should recover.
This is not the case and is actually impossible. Impossible they will maintain them or higher. And impossible we would recover.
The US is headed towards $1T in interest payments alone annually.
$34T in national debt AND $213T in unfunded liabilities. 2/3 of the budget is non-discretionary
The longer they stay elevated the more the average interest rate on debt goes up. For the US and the world since it's the reserve currency. This pisses everyone off.
Rates will go back down to around 2% because the US AND the world cannot sustain an expensive dollar. There's 65T in eurodollar debt (US dollar denominated debt) globally. [1] I've seen higher estimates too.
"Approximately half of all cross-border loans, international debt securities, and trade invoices are denominated in U.S. dollars, while roughly 40 percent of SWIFT messages and 60 percent of global foreign exchange reserves are in dollars." [2]
We aren't going to end up back around 2% because the Fed wants to. It's because we have to. You cannot maintain the world reserve currency at these rates after everyone got drunk off the lower rates for decades. And you cannot have the debt load we have and maintain these rates or higher. There's no easy way out of a debt spiral.
Just my opinion but rates will go lower. Printing will go into hyperdrive. Inflation will rip. There will be more unrest. Personally, I'm holding inflation-hedging assets.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/65-trillion-debt-bank...
[2] https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2022/07/the-u-...
How high do you think the rates should be?
Historically they are not low at all relative to inflation and considering how highly the government debt to GDP ratio is raising them further would lead to severe issues. Since a surplus or even a balanced federal budget is basically politically (probably financially too) impossible at this point high growth + low rates + predictable moderately high (2-3%) inflation is the only way to keep public debt from spiraling out of control.
> risk a similar situation as the early 80's.
IMHO the early 80s are about as relevant today as the 30s were back then. So a bit but not a lot. The global economy and financial system (and the position US has in it) is extremely different
"As long as the keep rates where they are or higher, we should recover."
Yet the Fed is talking about rate drops. We're also seeing rising consumer defaults and more perilous bank debt. And those great job numbers aren't that great since we're seeing higher part-time and low wage jobs than before. I'm not sure we're going to really avoid anything.
Ever more Americans can’t afford or can barely make rent.
America has always been famous for the fact that everything is extremely cheap. But now I'm seeing videos of people at Costco/Walmart showing the prices of stuff (often while finding an old price label and showing there's been a 50-100% increase over the last year) and it's actually way more expensive than what I pay in the UK.
It’s idiotic. I went to Zermatt and the little grocery store there was cheaper than Seattle Safeway. A ski resort in a land locked country with higher food quality standards that has cheaper food than a coastal US city with a port is absurd. I think safeway is trying to take over QFC/Kroger so that’s great.
I just looked up some price data for Zermatt and it seems that at least now, it's quite a bit more expensive than Seattle on average. https://www.numbeo.com/food-prices/in/Zermatt-Switzerland?di... https://hikersbay.com/prices/switzerland/zermatt?lang=en
the dollar is hitting record inflation rates though. does that mean the worst is yet to come for the dollar?
> record inflation rates
Record? I guess you didn’t live through the 1970s, much less post WWI and WWII.
Of course the deflation of the 1930s was even more destructive!
They changed the way we measure inflation big time since the 70s. My bills are up 40% in the last 3 years. The interesting thing is this is far from over. We will see how this ends. I'm not optimistic.
So you're saying that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics should throw their statistical methodology out of the window and instead use your bills to measure inflation?
I doubt the main commenter, meant it that way, why is there any need to bash them ?
It’s a political issue, well criticised and commented on, that governments intentionally game metrics like inflation, etc to look good on paper for incumbent presidents and heads of state.
Also, the inflation rate is a very inconsistent number, different regions of the US has different rent price increases, different cost of labour increases, different product prices for a lot of goods. How can the nation be entirely ruled by one common inflation rate.
All statistics like this which have to target so many regions, environments, and scenarios, always have to make decisions, that sacrifice some scenario or the other, where the “score” is a very poor indicator
This applies not just to inflation, but other metrics like gdp per capita, employment rate, etc.
There is no need for that condescending tone, especially when the author is talking about their increased cost of living, which prolly hurt their purchasing power.
His feelings are correctly placed though. Even though macro economists agree the current methodology is the least wrong, they also agree that the BLS series cannot explain why Americans have stopped saving and gone so deeply in debt. A slight error in BLS methodology, could explain that reality. So comparing the CPI to your own reality is clearly very rational.
His feelings were correctly placed. There was a vibecession last year when consumer sentiment was lower than it had been during the 2008 recession. This was in spite of low unemployment, high growth, high wage growth, low inflation and reasonable gas prices.
The reason behind the low consumer sentiment wasn't a flaw in BLS methodology, no one seriously questions any of the stats I mentioned. Rather, it's that the effect of a couple of years of high inflation continued to weigh on consumers. 6 months of low inflation didn't reverse previous price increases, nor did they forget what prices used to be.
And yet, it's fundamental human nature to adapt to circumstances. Consumer sentiment has actually increased substantially in the last 3 months. Source: American consumers are finally cheering up (The Economist - https://archive.is/vJ7gf).
> The rate of improvement is especially striking. The 30% increase since November marks the survey’s biggest rise over any three-month period in more than three decades. The level remains glum by historical standards: about 15% below its average in the five years before the covid-19 pandemic.
In summary, the BLS' methodology to calculate economic indicators is fine. And assuming those indicators continue their trend, it's likely that consumer sentiment will continue to recover.
You also claim that
> Americans have stopped saving and gone so deeply in debt
Except this isn't true? According to surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf23.pdf Page 30), consumer debt has gone down steadily from 2010 to 2022.
At this point, I got to ask - what is your source for facts?
> Americans have stopped saving
Have they? The personal savings rate is not that much lower than it was between 2000 and ~2019 on average
It's pretty low, and I'm not sure average is the best measure here, but I can't find median to compare.
I did see this a few weeks ago and thought it was interesting - excess saving rates are dropping sharply: https://twitter.com/saxena_puru/status/1747041218004156505
There is another household debt graph that I can't find right now that is going up. I suspect the decline in savings rate is being buoyed somewhat by debt.
Might be better than Krugman’s “no food, shelter, energy, or used cars” number
Such a strange comment. Yes, like most macroeconomists he uses a low pass filtered number (so-called “core inflation”) to look for underlying trends but is quite aware that headline inflation (includes the high frequency fluctuations) is what actual humans see at the store.
And he discussed the used car numbers — such an interesting outlier — as an indicator of supply-side shock.
You can agree or disagree with his Keynesian positions but he’s pretty clear with his thinking and calls out when he was wrong. To the degree macroeconomics can be considered a science, that’s what you want from a scientist, isn’t it?
This is a nonsense reply.
You’re committing a fallacy of “Appeal to Authority”, even though your comment doesn’t make sense — obviously we need a consistent measure across decades if we want to compare inflation across decades. Comparing two numbers that measure different things is an apples-to-oranges comparison. (Which is what you’re arguing we should do.)
If you use a consistent measure from a 1980s basis, you’ll see that person is correct — as measured using the historic means, we’ve had ~40% inflation in the past few years and the highest rate of inflation in 40 years.
This chart uses the historic measure and bases in 1980.
The Shadowstats numbers are deeply suspicious though; the graph makes it look like Williams is just adding [0] a constant to the BLS figure, which undermines his credibility. I'm also pretty sure he changes his constant every so often because I remember at one point his data implied absurd drops in the GDP and it appears the website has been changed since then.
I'd suggest just referring to the M2 [1]. It is easier to understand, and more available for analysis. Apparently it also gets rid of the stupid "real" price rises that inflation pretends gold is experiencing [2]. It suggests prices should be about 40% higher than pre-pandemic (I checked 2019-11 -> 2023-12) which coincidentally lines up with what justinzollars is reporting.
[0] Well, smoothing in. But the two lines wiggle the same way which suggests we're just using the BLS + an adjustment that is changing in a boring way over time.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL#0
[2] https://ingoldwetrust.report/chart-m2-gold-ratio/?lang=en
If anyone is wondering why wealth inequality is skyrocketing and at record highs in the US in centuries, this is why.
High inflation for consumers, access to low cost of capital for asset holders.
In addition to the erosion of progressive taxation.
> wealth inequality is skyrocketing and at record highs in the US in centuries...
Wealth inequality today is growing and is unconscionable, but just to look at the numbers it was far worse in the gilded age (and of course far far worse during slavery). Knowing that is no excuse for not fighting it, but let's not rely on hyperbole to make a point on HN.
> In addition to the erosion of progressive taxation.
I assume you mean that the progressive nature of the tax code is fading away, in which case I agree with you and consider it a terrible problem. In some states like Texas the tax code is actually quite regressive, but overall the whole country gone quite a bit backwards.
Interestingly, California's tax code is both too regressive and too progressive (though both are in principle fixable). Since most people with any wealth hold it in real estate, prob 13 has made homeowners in lucky locations asset rich but at a low tax rate, which is screwing up attempts to improve the housing situation. And I learned it was "too progressive" in 2008: so much of the state's income came from cap gains of rich people and during the real estate crash (leading to stock market woes), state revenues fell just when a surplus was needed. The same thing is happening now, though I expect it to unwind by the end of 2024. That can be fixed as well by changing the tax mix for the top 1% and above, (which is why I put "too progressive" in quotation marks).
Whenever there's a change in methodology, it's common practice to retroactively recalculate the entire series so that the data are consistent. Economists aren't that dumb.
It's not economists being dumb, it's gaming from politicians to paint a rosier picture than it is.
This still allows for you to choose the metric that best benefits your narrative today, which essentially every bls report has done.
I still remember them removing the people who had been out of the job for xx months during the 2008 recession from the 'unemployed' category. 'oh look unemployment is down!'. '...but so is the labor participation rate...'
Okay... we were talking about inflation. When and how exactly has the BLS chosen an inflation metric that suits "the narrative" of today?
Yea but news articles and anecdotes from that period in time aren’t rewritten
Well it's a perpetual dilemma as they have to keep changing: food is now less than 10% of a family's budget while it used to be over 30% as it is in poor countries like Russia (just happened to see that figure last week). People spend money on computers which they didnt' in the 1980s, etc.
> The interesting thing is this is far from over.
What do you think is the cause and why it is far from over? I'm curious, not trying to start an argument
Yes — if you use a consistent measure, this latest inflation is the same rate as the late-70s/early-80s inflation.
https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
In fact, 2020s inflation (using historic measure) peaked at over 15% while the 1970s spike peaked below 15% — meaning that this latest inflation sets the record compared to the 1970s.
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-inflation
Ignorant incredulity and “back in my day!” aren’t good arguments.
Shadowstats has admitted to just making up their data. Not exactly a compelling source. Best case they are just incompetent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowstats.com
JFC
> Responding to prior criticisms made by economist James Hamilton, John Williams explained in a private phone call that Shadowstats does not actually recalculate BLS data, rather, the Shadowstats CPI merely adds a constant to the officially reported numbers.[25]
>> I’m not going back and recalculating the CPI. All I’m doing is going back to the government’s estimates of what the effect would be and using that as an add factor to the reported statistics
Same article says he charges $175/year/subscription since 2006.
I'd love to get paid that much to do a high school level introductory programming assignment. The business logic is literally a one liner X-D
Inflation was consistently very high in the 70s while time time it peaked in 2022 and then went down relatively rapidly. Of course it might rebound but until that happens it’s hardly comparable.
You don't slavishly believe the government inflation data? That's fine; nothing wrong with that.
But don't slavishly believe Shadowstat's inflation number either.
The US inflation did not come out of devaluation of the dollar compared to other currencies. It was internal. What that means for the future however I have no idea.
But considering the US gov deficits I would assume more inflation is to come with actual devaluation.
> The Japanese folks I’ve spoken to are pretty grumbly about the weak yen, though.
Your money losing half its value in about a year tends to do that.
It's not like folks here regularly shop in USD. Sure, summer vacations in Hawaii have become more expensive, but...
Import-dependent companies - different story. Export-oriented companies: Yeehaw.
Apparently many American and European consumer products have pricing that tends to be indexed to USD. According to my wife, the Japanese women on her handbag forums are quite salty about the price of Chanel and such these days.
Sure. As we are salty about the price of Apple products. But how often do you buy this stuff?
Day in and day out, my bowl of Ramen is still 600 JPY. My veggies come from Aomori and my Milk from Hokkaido. It's fine.
I work in a company that has 95% export and my salary is paid in EUR/JPY and USD (don't ask). So I actually benefit quite a bit. But your average Japanese citizen is just not that much affected. (Unless she buys a lot of imported goods).
Food prices have shot up an insane amount. I was getting milk for 130 yen a carton 3 years ago and now it's 230 and up. Wheat is virtually all imported and prices for that are incredibly high. Even when food is produced locally (only about 38% self-sufficiency rate--most are exports[1]), it depends on foreign materials. e.g. Animals are fed imported grains, plants use imported fertilizers, manufacturing depends on imported materials.
The biggest complaint from Japanese Japanese (not expats paid in USD) is that food prices have blown up tremendously. It's literally daily headline news. But yeah yeah, the underclass is only complaining about their Apple hardware prices.
[1] https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/editorial/yomiuri-editorial/...
Did you move here three years ago? 2020-2021 was the heart of COVID deflation. I remember paying 110yen per litre for gasoline at Costco. Nic Hotels were 1万 a night for our family of three.
Any anchoring off late 2020 is super misleading. Milk at 130yen is not a reasonable price before COVID. Wheat to consumers at gyomu super or Costco has not moved in price, which is reasonable consider it has always cost several multiples over wholesale.
Worst has perhaps been sushi. The selection of 110yen sushi had gotten slightly smaller.
Overall, Japan has a lot less inflation than you'd expect considering the exchange rate.
Had you bought 1L milk for 130JPY? It's too cheap even in 2019 so I suspect that it's loss leader on your supermarket. In my area, price jumped from 190 to 230.
One of a big reason why Japanese aren't be hurt so much (compared to Europe?) by inflation is because govt support for raised gas and electricity price. Some foods are made in local, but gas for production and transportation is 100% imported.
That is super true, and not super common knowledge in Japan. The gasoline subsidy was aging out late last year and news started covering the mysterious persistent increase in gasoline prices.
You'd think kishida-san would want more credit for his vote buying haha.
This seems pretty spot on. I would bet that the median Japanese citizen cares infinitely more about local food prices than the cost of a chanel bag.
> As we are salty about the price of Apple products. But how often do you buy this stuff?
Even if you splurge on a foreign luxury product once a year, it can seem like a downgrade in standard of living. Perhaps especially so if your special occasion is impacted and meanwhile you’re not seeing any higher affordability of domestic goods.
I mean, my whole family got a kick out of spending much less than expected for a week while we were in Japan, even though the other 51 weeks this year we will be dealing with US inflation. Psychology around inflation is weird.
What was your experience with hotel prices?
Quite low. Four star hotels in Kyoto are under $100/night right now.
I don't run in Channel circles but LV and Prada are much cheaper in Japan rn. Another handbag hack is to purchase in Hawaii because the retailers charge less there than mainland to address the Japanese tourist market.
Oh yeah, Chanel bags, the common expense for a median customer.
Japan is an import-dependent company. Fuel and food are mostly imports, so that hurts everyone.
And export oriented companies are making money. But trickle down economics is a myth, so it's not benefitting the workers. The executives are doing nicely so good for them I suppose.
Maybe trickle down economics works if you ask nicely? :-)
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Japan-PM-Kishida-asks-compan...
It hasn't lost half its value. A "weak yen" simply means the yen depreciated relative to another currency.
Yes but there’s inflation too. The yen has devalued, but also the cost of goods in USD has gone up.
Japan has low inflation, like most developed countries.
USD to JPY 1y chart does not show a 50% decline - more like 11%
Because it already collapsed a year ago. Look at 5 years.
It lost ~33% of its value vs the US Dollar in 5 years and you claimed it lost half its value in "about a year."
December 2021 to October 2022. 103 yen to 149 yen.
Sorry for overestimating. It was only 10 months. :)
Going from ¥103/$1 to ¥149/$1 is a 30.9% loss in value. A 50% loss in value would be going from (eg) ¥100/$1 to ¥200/$1.
I'm trying to reverse engineer your thinking. Did you do 150 - 100 = 50, then use 100 as the denominator to get 50%? Because that's not what "losing 50% of value" means.
> The Japanese folks I’ve spoken to are pretty grumbly about the weak yen, though.
Worth noting that the Yen was much stronger back in 1989. These peaks are not the same.
My graph says it's about the same against USD.
> Ordered a bunch of sushi at a mall sushi place in Kyoto for what it would cost for Chipotle in DC
Mall sushi has always been cheap in japan
Food, in general, has always been cheap in Japan.
Went this summer and it was a great deal for a two week vacation. As long as you can get an ok price for plane tickets, it is cheaper to visit Japan than much of the USA (assuming American).
It’s too bad China is still hard to get to by plane (Russian airspace being closed really hurts).
> It’s too bad China is still hard to get to by plane (Russian airspace being closed really hurts).
Assuming you're flying from eastern US, taking the pacific route to bypass RU airspace instead of the polar route doesn't add that much distance to get to coastal China.
And Chinese airlines can still overfly RU.
I’m coming from Seattle. Before the pandemic, we had two direct flights. Now the cheapest flight to Beijing is through Istanbul, and the next cheapest ticket (with a much more reasonable flight time) is 50% of the cost, and stop in either Japan or Korea to switch planes.
If you are going to southern China you wouldn’t be save so much going over far east Russia anyways, I guess.
Also, Chinese airlines can’t overfly Russia on the way to the USA, at least for newly approved flights: https://www.reuters.com/world/chinese-airlines-avoiding-russ...
Just 12*2 weekly round trip flights between the USA and China really sucks. There were a lot more before the pandemic. But it seems like we are going to 35 soon? https://simpleflying.com/us-china-lift-number-weekly-flights.... (Or already?)
How is the visa, biometrics, surveillance situation there these days? Was just telling someone yesterday that I’ll probably never make it there.
Visa situation is a bit easier since they don’t require an invitation letter for Americans anymore. I’m not sure about the biometrics and surveillance now, but it should be limited to a finger print and…China probably has little interest in monitoring you while in the country, they would rather have more tourists than less, as long as you aren’t unlucky enough to be picked for retaliation (or naive enough to snap pictures of navy ships in tourist areas).
Thanks. Well, everyone says there’s little interest in…, but for some reason surveillance keeps increasing. That tells me there actually is interest.
It is wrong to think of the Chinese government as a well organized/disciplined machine that can ease drop on citizens and visitors alike. It really is much more chaotic than that: they rely on services to local self censor because they don't have anywhere near enough to do so on their own, nor do they really want to.
When you visit there is lots of chaos, like people parking on sidewalks when they aren't supposed to, or driving the wrong way down a street and no one even batting an eye, or obvious brothels advertising out in the open. Like, if the Chinese government can't even control these simple kinds of things, why do you think they are going to try and control much harder cases?
I believe that.
However, as patio11 said (and surely not the first), the optimal amount of fraud for a payment system is non-zero. Profit is higher when convenience is prioritized over security.
Similarly, it seems the optimal amount of crime for a government is not zero either. Everyone breaking the law allows everyone to be dealt with as needed. Sure I keep a low profile, and they probably have a full profile on us already, but it doesn't feel satisfying helping out.
On the other hand, despite my better judgement I let Japan take photos of me, etc. Who knows what they do with them.
I guess. You'll never feel as free and as restricted as you will in China, both at the same time! Free in the sense that almost anything goes in the party scene (although stay away from drugs, big no-no, even if you are offered some), restricted in the sense that many internet sites don't work and you are always worried that the Chinese authorities will become interested in you for some odd reason (even though this is unlikely, we usually aren't as interesting as we think we are).
Japan in comparison is much more law and order from the start, and mostly the opposite. Japanese Police will search your stuff just to look busy, but they are never going to unnecessarily persecute you.
We flew ZipAir which has amazing prices on lay-flat seats, around $2,000 round trip. Also significant discounts for kids: tickets for my 2 year old and 5 year old were just a few hundred dollars round trip.
Checking prices on google flights, assuming a trip in April from SFO where I live, cheapest option is about $800 round trip to Tokyo, or $1050 to Shenzhen. A bit cheaper but maybe not a significant difference for such a long distance trip.
Same! Just got back and I really miss the cheap everything, and relatively high quality as well. Picked up some Uniqlo things that would have been 2x the price in the US.
So sad "We can't afford Uniqlo" is a meme in Japan...
I guess the meme is because Uniqlo is cheap as fuck there that one have to be so poor to not be able to afford it. But ironically in my country, it's quite a prestige brand because my currency is even weaker so it's actually quite expensive.
The meme is about the inflation.
Uniqlo was cheap as fuck. Now it's gotten so expensive that even median Japanese can't afford it.
I wouldn't go that far. Sure, it's not as cheap as it used to be, but the average Japanese person can certainly afford to shop there.
As always with the memes, I agree that it's largely an exaggeration. But I can assure you that it is definitely getting too expensive these days, and I'll think twice before buying from them.
Idk but maybe Uniqlo is uniquely cheap in Japan as Japanese chain? I've bought Uniqlo in Poland, UK, USA and Korea and prices stayed relatively consistent.
It’s more about the exchange rate, 150 yen to a dollar is verryyy good for the dollar.
Perils of dollar maintaining whatever value it wants to maintain by just whims and fancy and the rest of the world trying to wag their tails and trying to keep up, or not.
Restaurant food is cheap in Japan because there are many high-quality restaurants. The competition drives the price down. Furthermore it may be in the best interest of Japan for their monetary policy to weaken the yen because it induces demand in tourism.
Tourism is a tiny part of Japan's economy.
$13 it's damn expensive, by comparison you can get a decent meal (nothing fancy, but not fast food level) at mosts restaurants in Spain.
Sushi is cheaper in Japan?
Sushi is waaaaay cheaper in Japan. Always has been, now more so.
It's the island country with fishing being well developed part of the economy, so of course fish-based food is dirt cheap.
Their economy is still not doing well. The sole reason that the NIKKEI is storming it is that banks only offer negative interest rates on bank deposits. Thus, the NIKKEI is the only real option left.
https://www.focus-economics.com/country-indicator/japan/inte....
Japanese TINA. They finally have inflation, which means they finally have growth regardless of whether they have productivity gain.
"There Is No Alternative"? I had to consult ChatGPT to get that acronym explained.
thank you for clarifying, the grandparent comment made no sense
I was highly suspicious of the implication that the Japanese government would do anything other than making sure nothing changes
Meanwhile the real wages are dropping like a waterfall and the cheap yen is hurting our lives disastrously.
Funny how every single foreigner seems to think the "weak yen" is ruining everyone's lives and yet I've never heard a Japanese person complain about it
I'm Japanese.
Sorry for assuming you weren't
Not to be judgemental, I doubt you usually hear a lot from Japanese person in the first place; most Japanese don't speak English at all. Locals speaking to a BBC reporter in fluent English don't happen in Japan or with Japanese users on Internet.
Japanese public education curricula do include "English", but it's largely "English-Japanese document translations" classes than actual English, which is good for research papers and bureaucratic letters, works like any 2000s machine translation in conversations. The majority won't bring that technique out and employ it well to win an Internet pub fight, especially on societal-macro-economical problems, so you likely will not hear anything from actual Japanese people on this topic or anything else.
I live in Japan, speak Japanese fluently, and have mostly Japanese friends
This might shock you, but BBC correspondents who live in Japan either have access to translators, or can speak the language.
It's a double-edged sword though. A weaker yen can increase export sales, however import value will be much higher. Currently, most products in Japan are made from Japanese companies, which is why the Japanese people don't feel the impact yet.
There's a strong home market bias in Japan, and the government is helping with gas prices as well.
Manufacturing domestically doesn't mean it's not influenced.
Much food and natural resources are imported, not to mention anything dollar pegged like smartphones are simply getting more expensive. Seriously, stuffs like iPhone and GPU feel stupidly expensive but when you check the price in dollars, they look acceptable.
My wage in terms of dollars have remained the same for the last 5 years despite earning double. It's not ruining my life only because it takes longer for prices to increase here -- but they are definitely increasing.
Japanese people also don't like talking about wages and not everyone compares what they are making to the dollar. I have heard plenty of colleagues, friends, and family complain. It's more about how the number of diapers in a bag has decreased steadily from 72 to 56 than boy my life is getting ruined by weak yen.
The more prevalent complaints are from fellow mortgage borrowers. Variable rates in Japan have been steady for nearly 30 years, meaning a substantial number of borrowers are watching the central bank's moves like a hawk and are terrified of even any talks of rate increases.
TLDR: We are just not loud complainers (and frankly, if any Japanese person you know is hopefully very lucky, they might be earning just enough to not notice it all)
I hear what you're saying about Japanese people not complaining as much, but I don't think it's just that. The only time they complain about 円安 is when they go abroad, which isn't very often.
The problem is a lot more noticeable for foreigners living in Japan temporarily because they don't think of their worth in the local currency. They then generalize their problems to the rest of the population.
When you think of your money in dollars, and you see it going down a lot, it looks like a life or death crisis. But the average person in Japan sees prices go up a bit, which is frustrating, but not to the same degree.
What kind of exaggeration is that?
Things are getting more expensive slightly over the years and that is nothing disastrous unless your life was already quite disastrous and made it even worse or you're purely an importer or rely on natural resources to see weak yen ruin your business.
Otherwise, it's mostly life as usual.
Japanese man in his 70s: "Yippee Yay! It only took 34 years to get back what I invested in the index, because indexes always go up. And now everything costs double".
The returns of the investment are not the index price, these companies have been paying dividends for 30 years.
If you look at the actual returns they recovered years ago (tho not so long).
Looks like the Nikkei 225 average dividend yield is around 1.4%. If you bought in 1989 and reinvested dividends it looks like you would have briefly broken even in 2015 (ignoring inflation), then hit solid black sometime in 2017. This is completely absurd and shows how huge of a factor timing is in market investments.
Remember, kids, dollar cost averaging is usually the way to go.
Yeah but it's also an absurdly rare occurrence that someone would put 100% of their wealth I to the stock market RIGHT before the crash and then never invests again (more than the dividends). These headlines are fun and all but not very relevant for most people
Investing everything in a single country, even if in the index, has never been a good idea.
The advice is to invest as broadly and globally as possible, which has resulted in very good return during the last 35 years.
Also, nothing "always goes up". Index investing over long periods of time simple gives you the best risk adjusted returns.
While academically you are correct, I am not sure I would say it has never been a good idea. I have a US bias but most portfolios in the US have a significant if not total weighting on domestic markets. Even in my memory of the last 10 years there have been continuous questions on how much international exposure one should have. Most of the time you see something like a 5-10% exposure in international markets which in theory gives you the "best risk adjusted returns" but in reality since the US has been a continuous powerhouse, gives you a lower overall return.
Many people, especially in Japan don't realize not investing and simply saving means they're actually investing in their own country long term, which for Japan, doesn't look like a smart strategy at this point.
The Boglehead philosophy has always required depending on the exceptionalism of a single country during a single century.
The boglehead philosophy involves slow accumulation of an index portfolio over time. Not many people had a huge windfall in 1989 and put it all in the Nikkei at once. The money you invested in 1980 is up 500% before dividends.
The money invested in 1940 is on fire.
You are not entirely wrong. The thing is though, the US has been an economic powerhouse on the global stage for decades. The US health impacts much of the rest of the world's markets.
While that is true, there's also no guarantee that we do not see a stagnation of the world stock markets for decades. World indices are also highly concentrated to a few countries, e.g. US is more than 60%.
Yes, if you invested all of your wealth in the index right before the crash then you were in very bad shape. But this isn't how most investment works. You buy in as you accumulate more savings. Most investors also got to experience and benefit from the extreme runup.
Hopefully they didn't sit around without investing for 34 years.The evolution of what they invest 34 years ago (at the peak) is only one part of the equation. There is also what was invest a while before that. And when was earned and invested each year since. No matter which country, you don't want to find yourself investing only at the peak and nothing before or after.
The crisis in Europe, the unpredictability of American politics, and the mounting tensions with China make Japan a attractive alternative for investing right now.
Japan has been in an economic stasis for decades, some believe this to be triggered by the 1985 Plaza Accords which devalued the Dollar against the Mark and the Yen.
Germany recovered from that shock by absorbing East Germany and pushing EU integration. Japan did not have this options, but the new multipolar world order might give them an opportunity.
This will probably be to the detriment of Germany and the US, which both probably would like to increase the value of the yen.
But given that the American are not perceived as a reliable partner right now, I do not see something like the Plaza Cords coming again any time soon.
Plaza Accords: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord
Impact on Yen and Mark: https://www.macrotrends.net/2550/dollar-yen-exchange-rate-hi... https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/312004/umfrag...
Germany is doing just fine, it passed Japan as the bigger economy. Japan is one declining, their demographic shrinkage and a stagnant economy for the past 3 decades.
> Germany is doing just fine
Perhaps do a little research than believe whatever you want to believe?
Just searching for "german economy" would yield the world is saying the opposite.
I did do bit of research. Please tell me what am I missing?
Japan
GDP: $4.230 trillion GDP Per Capita: $33,950 Expected 2024 Growth: 1.0%
Germany
GDP: $4.4 trillion GDP Per Capita: $52,800 Expected 2024 Growth: 0.2%
Did you read the article? Or even just the headline?
A rally in the stock market does not necessarily reflect a strong economy. See e.g. Abenomics
DAX made new all-time highs while Germany's economy is not doing great at all.
In 2021 the Bank of Japan had become the largest shareholder in the Nikkei. Is that still true? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-06/boj-becom...
Not sure, but BOJ was a net seller of stocks in 2023: https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Bank-of-Japan/BOJ-turned-net...
So, it seems like they're at least starting to offload their stock holdings.
I was very surprised when I learned that their central bank was purchasing stocks. I'd heard about it first in 2020, but apparently it had been going on before the pandemic.
It makes me wonder if the US stock market crashed hard enough if the Fed would start buying up stocks on the major indexes. Are they even legally allowed to do this? If so, what other assets can the Fed acquire? REITs? What about direct real estate purchases? I wonder if corporate real estate crashed hard enough from remote work if they'd prop it up.
If push came to shove, the FED's last resort could be to buy stock ETFs
Bro that happened in covid
The federal reserve buys bonds in order to increase the money supply, as happened during 2020. It isn't allowed to buy stock. In 2020, the fed bought treasury securities, mortgage bonds and also corporate bonds for the first time (which might be what you are thinking of).
???
Are you claiming the Fed has directly purchased US stocks? I don't think they have.
I've only ever seen reports of them buying government and mortgage debt: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/22/how-the-federal-reserve-affe...
You can argue the purpose of these actions was to prop up the stock market, but I don't think they've ever intervened in as direct a manner as the Bank of Japan has with buying company stocks.
No it didn’t. The fed doesn’t buy stocks
Price of gold in 1989: ~2000 yen/g
Price of gold in 2024: 9,800 yen/g
Here's data for the price of gold over the same period in USD, showing almost same 5x increase. Could you explain the relevance of either to this story about the Nikkei?
Price of gold in 1989: ~$370 USD/oz
Price of gold in 2024: ~2000 USD/oz
The relevance is that this is not remotely an all-time high when denominated in gold (and, presumably, an implicit claim that a valuation in gold is in somehow more "real" than a valuation in nominal yen)
Okay. But denominating in gold is a weird thing to do and only looks this way when you pick specific dates. Pick 1987 and 2000 as your dates and things look very different.
That’s idiotic because nobody actually deals in gold. It just means gold appreciates some amount.
The way this is handled is standard inflation adjustment based on things people actually use.
Meanwhile, Japan entered recession last week.
Finally people can stop pointing to the Japanese stock market as an example of a crash that never recovered.
The lesson is still relevant though - i.e. if you bought shares in the top 100 Japanese companies in 1989, it would have taken you ~35 years to break even in nominal terms. That's clearly a bad investment.
Forgetting dividends here.
And you are forgetting that the index's underlying measure, the yen, has lost value and the NIKKEI has only reached 1989's nominal value.
Roughly 27 years with dividend reinvestment (yes, really).
30 years to reach nominal parity? Normalize out inflation and the Nikkei still sucks - despite Japan's infamously low inflation.
Well it also paid dividends the entire time too which doesn’t get factored into the price. So maybe it matched up with inflation. I don’t know either way. You’d have to compare the total return with the total inflation.
Inflation was about 0.5% and dividend yield around 1% so it's still up
It hasn’t. Adjust for inflation and include the risk free rate of return and it’s an ugly picture.
>> Adjust for inflation and include the risk free rate of return
You should choose one of those two, not both.
> Finally people can stop pointing to the Japanese stock market as an example of a crash that never recovered.
Except it's not the same yen to yen comparison on account of inflation.
Depends on your definition of "never". 35 years does sound like "never" for many people.
Hmm maybe the bull market is just beginning around the world
They finally got the inflation they wanted for 30 years
And this is why investing I don't invest in index funds.
Investing in the (broad) index doesn’t promise a positive real return. It promises lower volatility than any stock picking strategy. If you want exposure to the Japanese economy, then index investing is still the right choice if you want to maximize return for a given volatility.
It depends on the % of investors that are in those broad indexes. If too many people flock into them, they become more risky than an average stock. And stocks in indexes become overvalued compared to stocks not in indexes.
If you’ve got a stock picking strategy that promises a real return, I’m all ears. As far as I know, the market makes no promises period.
I really don't see how one example of an index going down makes all the others a bad investment. Sure the Nikkei is diversified across industries but it's not comparable to international indexes.
That's not the only issue with this reasoning, this index is not a total returns one. And if you had been investing regularly you'd have bought companies at the Lowe price, which has produced a 2-3 times return in the last ten years.
Still, I also prefer global indexes.
I think the point is that "indexes are overall superior to stock picking, and always go up over long periods of time" is disproved by the history of Nikkei.
Sure, at a given time and place, an index may be better. At other times one or two stocks may be better. But I think the "time in the market beats timing the market, always" is kind of negated by Japan's lost decades.
Cherry picking the ONE counter example is not proving your point.
Second part of typical boglehead advice which you conveniently ignored is dollar cost averaging.
I've heard index funds require you to buy them only in single installment. Buying them over time to minimize impact of some peak is not allowed.
Which is completely countered by purchasing ETFs.
investing in anything carries some degree of risk?