Henry / Japan
OK, I'll bite.
I have invested there, via WEBs. Only a modest, intro position -- maybe one third of what I will eventually put there. Opened the position about two years ago, and am waiting for some stronger indications before committing more, which is a segue into:
- short term -- who the heck knows? I wouldn't begin to hazard a guess what the next couple of quarters are like.
- medium term -- very optimistic. I think they can have a good bounce from Asian recovery, and possibly from unwinding of the last few years capital flows into the U.S., without necessarily addressing the fundamental, structural problems in a meaningful way. By a "good bounce", I'm thinking 50%-100% on the Nikkei over the next two or three years.
- long term -- beats me. IMHO this is partly a sociological question. As I understand the problems with the banking system, they are part of a broader way that the commercial culture evolved after the war -- interrelated conglomerates, no failure, lifetime employment, all that stuff. To go through the kind of clean-up that the U.S. did after the S&L issue would be a much greater ordeal, in the context of Japanese culture as I understand it, than it was for the U.S., which at some level recognizes the role of allowing failure in the effectiveness of the market system.
I think that Japan has tremendous potential. If they were to effectively deal with the structural problems, there is no reason they couldn't have another boom like they had in the 80s. Personally, I intend to be positioned to take advantage of it.
There you go, Henry. It's not brilliant, but maybe it'll help liven up the thread. |
