Daily Times

Foreign investors remained net sellers of Japanese stocks for a second straight week ended Feb. 2, as comments from the U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell dashed expectations of a rate cut in March. According to data from Japanese exchanges, foreigners sold a net 264.06 billion yen ($1.78 billion) of Japanese stocks last week, a smaller sale compared with 574.95 billion yen in the prior week. They sold derivative contracts of about 442.46 billion yen on a net basis, but secured about 178.4 billion yen worth of equities. The Nikkei still gained about 1.1% last week, while on Thursday, it closed at 36,863.28, the highest close since February 1990. Meanwhile, cross-border investors poured a massive 1.94 trillion yen into short-term Japanese bonds in their biggest weekly net buying since Jan. 5, data from Japan’s Ministry of Finance showed. They also accumulated about 394.4 billion yen of long-term bonds. Concurrently, Japanese investors purchased a net 456.6 billion yen of long-term and 351.5 billion yen of short-term overseas bonds, staying net buyers for a second successive week. They, however, exited about 194.7 billion yen of foreign equity in a second successive week of net selling.