Foreign Investors Buy Into the Japanese Recovery....

Foreign investors buy into the Japanese recovery, but the Japanese themselves apparently don't, or at least if they do its's on nothing like the same scale. More to add to the puzzle I was getting at in my last post about how people seem to find all this so hard to understand or accept. Denial, what denial!

Foreign buying of Japanese stocks has reached a record level as global investors buy into the country’s economic recovery. Overseas investors bought Y9,441bn ($78.9bn) more in Japanese shares than they sold in the year to November 18, according to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The figure includes trading on the Osaka and Nagoya exchanges and beats the previous record of Y9,127bn in 1999.

Feverish overseas interest has been the biggest reason behind Japanese stocks’ sharp rise. The Tokyo Stock Price index climbed 33 per cent to 1,529.67 by last Friday – though the rise is still dwarfed by the near 60 per cent increase in 1999.....

But the strong interest shown by foreigners contrasts with the scepticism of Japanese institutional investors, who are still net sellers. For this reason, Japan bears regard this year’s share price rally as very fragile.