In the world’s third biggest economy, public skepticism toward financial investing has become so entrenched that investment bank Nomura Holdings is teaching economic basics in high schools to win over the next generation.
About 8 in 10 Japanese have never invested in securities, according to a lobby group for the nation’s brokers. Securities and investments account for only 16% of ¥2 quadrillion in household financial assets, compared with 56% in the United States.
An asset-price bubble erased trillions of dollars in wealth in Japan when it burst in the early 1990s, creating a generation of people who believe stocks will only go down. Instead, for decades, most have held the majority of their wealth in cash. That’s left many missing out on a boom in global stocks in the years following the 2008 financial crisis.