An investment trust fund boom appears in the offing.
In retrospect, the balance of stock investment trust funds hit 45 trillion yen at the end of the asset-inflated bubble economy, outshining its U.S. counterparts, which then stood at the equivalent of 40 trillion yen.
However, the burst of the bubble in the early 1990s and the poor performance of investment funds that ensued have frightened individual investors away from the stock market, and the Japanese balance now stands at 12 trillion yen, roughly one-20th of the outstanding U.S. balance.