For Komaki Ito's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
For all the frenzy over the Bank of Japan's first policy tweak in almost two years, little seems to have changed for the nation's insurers. That's because the rise in long-end government bond yields seen after the central bank's July 31 decision has proved to ...
Regional banks need to stop their fixation with the old-fashioned buy-and-hold strategy and be more nimble to make the most of their investments, a three-decade industry veteran says. The current low interest-rate environment calls for lenders to adopt a trading mentality and look to lock-in ...
When shopping in Japan, a phrase you'll hear all the time is "Do you have a point card?" And the most common is the T-card, which can be used at hundreds of thousands of shops nationwide, from car accessory dealers to convenience stores. Half of ...
Ryohei Nomoto wants to put fresher sashimi on your plate, and more money in the wallets of Japan's struggling fishermen. His venture air-freights freshly caught fish from across Japan, processes them on the grounds of Tokyo's Haneda airport, and distributes the produce to the city's ...
Nowcast Inc., a Japanese financial research and technology startup, has developed a product that estimates economic growth in real time by using satellite images of nighttime lights. Based on algorithms that examine changes in the intensity of illumination, as well as a range of published ...
A Japanese startup is entering the equity research business in a bid to challenge the dominance of securities firms by using computers to crunch vast troves of information and predict companies' earnings. Nowcast Inc., a financial-technology venture formed last year out of the University of ...
Yoshinori Nomura felt like weeping. It was the morning of June 24, Brexit day, and markets were moving against him. Well, not against him, exactly. It was the hedge fund manager's self-learning computer program that had placed the bet, selling Japanese stock-index futures before a ...
Japan's bond investors are so desperate for yield that more and more of them are putting money in notes from insurers whose value can be wiped out by unexpectedly strong hurricanes or earthquakes. Catastrophe bonds in the U.S. yield 3.3 percent on average, a Swiss ...
Simplex Asset Management Co. is taking some lessons from Tokyo's iconic wholesale fish market as it starts a fund to invest in companies looking to move their listings to the Topix index. The new fund is betting that companies moving their listings to the Topix ...
For Kyo Yamamoto, leaving investment choices to a computer rather than making his own calls has been the best strategy as unorthodox global monetary policies only worsen market volatility. Right now, the machine says sell Japan government bonds. GCI Systematic Macro Fund, a Japanese hedge ...
