'The entrepreneurial spirit in Japan is not dead'

Heartwood's Michael Stanes

Corporate profitability in Japan has hit record highs as improved global growth, together with a still evolving secular trend of Japanese companies improving corporate performance, bear fruit.

In that sense alone, it would seem that Japan should be an attractive place to invest. Sadly however, the Japanese equity market is not always that predictable.  Many investors view Japanese equities as a simple play on exchange rates - and there is plenty of evidence to support that - with periods of yen strength being seen as problematic for the country's large exporters (think Toyota, Sony, Hitachi and the like) and such periods generally resulting in poor returns from major equity indices.  Tokyo-based fund group launches Japanese equity portfolios in UK retail push Politics t...