Asia-Pacific

Our Chief Global Strategist explains the reasons why there is too much unjustified pessimism about Abenomics.

Our Asian currency expert discusses the potential ramifications of the increasing CNY-orientation for Asian currencies.

Nikko Asset Management's Global Investment Committee met on March 29th and updated our intermediate-term house view on the global economic backdrop, central bank policies, financial markets and investment strategy advice.

We expect June and December Fed hikes, but only mild further easing ahead for the BOJ and ECB. Meanwhile, we expect oil prices to creep higher through 2016 despite the stronger USD due to relatively firm economic developments in China and the G-3.

We expect that global equity and bond investing will be positive for Yen based investors due to Yen weakness, but for USD based investors, we are taking only a neutral stance on global equities due to a cautious forecast for US equities, whereas we are positive on Asia-Pac ex Japan, Japan and Europe. Meanwhile, we are moderately negative on bonds in each region when measured in USD terms, so we underweight them.

Our Singapore-based Fixed Income Portfolio Manager details the reasons for ASEAN’s recent rebound and why such should continue.

Our global strategist sheds light on how corporate profit margins are reflecting the continuing improvement of corporate governance in Japan.

This policy change by the BOJ is a positive in terms of maintaining and strengthening the inflation expectations that have begun to flower.

Unfortunately for the soundness of the sleep among BOJ-watchers, Mr. Kuroda believes that surprising the market is the best way to achieve his intended result.

Our Chief Global Strategist regards Japan positively in the global-macro context and predicts that Japanese equities will outperform global equities in the first half of 2016.