World’s biggest pension fund finds best friend in Trump

Bloomberg

One of the world’s most conservative investors has found an unlikely new ally in one of its most flamboyant politicians: Donald Trump.
The unconventional president-elect’s victory is helping Japan’s giant pension fund in two important ways. First, it’s sending stock markets surging, both at home and overseas, which is good news for the largely passive equity investor. Second, it’s spurred a tumble in the yen, which increases the value of its overseas investments. After the $1.2 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund reported its first gain in four quarters, analysts are betting the Trump factor means there’s more good news to come.
“The Trump market will be a tailwind for Abenomics in the near term,” said Kazuhiko Ogata, the Tokyo-based chief Japan economist at Credit Agricole SA. And “GPIF will be the biggest beneficiary among Japanese investors.”
While most analysts were concerned a Trump victory would hurt equities and strengthen the yen, the opposite has been the case. Japan’s benchmark Topix index cruised into a bull market last week and has risen for 11 straight days. The 4.6 percent slump on Nov. 9 now seems a distant memory. The yen, meanwhile, is heading for its biggest monthly drop against the dollar since 2009.
GPIF posted a 2.4 trillion yen ($21 billion) investment gain in the three months ended Sept. 30, after more than 15 trillion yen in losses in the previous three quarters. Those losses wiped out all investment returns since the fund overhauled its strategy in 2014 by boosting shares and cutting debt. It held more than 40 percent of assets in stocks, and almost 80 percent of those investments were passive at the end of March.
Tokyo stocks are reaping double rewards from Trump, as the weaker yen boosts the earnings outlook for the nation’s exporters. The Topix is the fifth-best performer since Nov. 9 among 94 primary equity indexes tracked by Bloomberg.

GLOBAL RALLY
But they’re not the only ones. More than $640 billion has been added to the value of global stocks since Nov. 10, when many markets around the world started to climb on bets Trump would unleash fiscal stimulus and spur inflation, which has boosted the dollar and weakened the yen. The S&P 500 Index closed Wednesday at a record high in New York.
Bonds have tumbled for the same reasons, with around $1.3 trillion wiped off the value of an index of global debt over the same period. Japan’s benchmark 10-year sovereign yield touched a nine-month high of 0.045 percent on Friday, surging from as low as minus 0.085 percent on Nov. 9. GPIF’s return to profit is a welcome respite after critics at home lambasted it for taking on too much risk and putting the public’s retirement savings in jeopardy.
The fund’s purchases of stocks are a “gamble,” opposition lawmaker Yuichiro Tamaki said in an interview in September, after an almost 20 percent drop in Japan’s Topix index in the first half of the year was followed by a 7.3 percent one-day plunge after Britain’s shock vote to leave the European Union. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that month that short-term losses aren’t a problem for the country’s pension finances.