Financial Times – If hedge fund managers believed in salvation, then Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe would be a prime candidate for saviour.
\nFor a $2.4tn industry whose returns for the past four years have been disappointing at best, and moribund at worst, only one trade has really mattered of late: buying Japan.<\/p>\n
The soaring Nikkei and plummeting yen – triggered by Mr Abe’s move to precipitate a dramatic change in policy at the Bank of Japan towards greater quantitative easing \u2013 have powered some of the biggest returns in years for hedge funds.<\/p>\n
The Nikkei 225 has rallied 32 per cent so far this year, while the yen has fallen 11.4 per cent against the dollar.<\/p>\n
“You have big managers talking about the opportunities in Japan a lot more than they have done for as long as I can remember,” says Christy York, EMEA head of capital introduction at Citi.<\/p>\n
“We have had a few false dawns in Japan before and they have run out of steam. This time there does seem to be more of a consensus that this is the real thing. There is more optimism that this is a long-term structural transition.”<\/p>\n