Lottery sales for the year ended March were 23% off their peak in 2005, according to the Internal Affairs Ministry. The total -- 845.2 billion yen ($7.7 billion) -- fell below the 900 billion yen mark for the first time since 1998.
Meanwhile, the number of investors in Japan rose by 2.7 million in the five years through 2016, to 23.5 million. The increase came despite the fact that individual investors, the vast majority of whom are 60 or older, were net stock sellers over the same period.
"Japan at the moment just doesn't have the culture for it," said Nicholas Smith, Japan strategist at Hong Kong-based brokerage CLSA. "If you look at Japanese pension funds, they are overwhelmingly in bonds, in the market where 60% of the government bonds have negative yields. The idea of changing that way of thinking, to suddenly be able to announce plans for Tokyo to be a major financial center, seems kind of laughable to me."
The majority of households' 1,809 trillion yen in assets sit idle in cash and deposits, according to the Bank of Japan. Risky assets, including investment trusts and mutual funds, account for just 17%, compared with 52.4% in the U.S.
Submitted August 27, 2017 at 09:35PM by pangolin44 http://ift.tt/2vutHOn
