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Japan’s stock market has climbed past its all-time closing high, passing the record level struck during the country’s late-1980s asset bubble after a 34-year wait.
The Nikkei 225 index of the biggest Japanese companies passed its 38,915 record close during intraday trading on Thursday, capping a powerful rally during 2024, driven by rises in chip-related stocks such as Screen, Tokyo Electron and Advantest.
The latest gains carried the benchmark index above its closing level on the final trading day of 1989, when 15 Japanese companies ranked among the world’s 20 biggest by market capitalisation. That peak has long been referred to by Tokyo traders as the “iron coffin lid”, with its apparent unattainability becoming a symbol of the three and a half decades of economic stagnation that followed the bursting of Japan’s stock and property bubble.
“It’s an incredibly important barrier for Japan to have finally broken through,” said Bruce Kirk, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs.
“For the last thirty-plus years, Japan has been persistently framed in relation to that December 1989 bubble era Nikkei all-time-high. No matter how well it has done since the market finally bottomed, the narrative has always been tempered with an element of scepticism that references the high-water mark.”
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