Foreign Investors Selling Japanese Stocks

Foreign investors sold heavily in Japanese stocks this week as concerns about rising US interest rates and rising Treasury yields depressed risk appetite. Foreign investors sold a net 1.64 trillion yen ($11.00 billion) of equities in the week ending September 29, according to data from Japanese exchanges, the most weekly net selling since March 17.

They sold around 1.56 trillion yen in futures and extracted 77.62 billion yen from cash equities. The Topix index fell 2.3 percent last week, its worst weekly loss since Aug. 18, while the Nikkei fell nearly 1.7 percent for the second week. Foreign investors have poured about 5.51 trillion yen into Japanese shares so far this year, compared with about 4.63 trillion yen worth of net selling last year.

Meanwhile, overseas investors secured a minimal $25.8 billion yen of long-term Japanese bonds last week, following approximately $2.02 trillion yen of net selling in the previous week, according to Japan's Ministry of Finance statistics. However, they withdrew almost 1.05 trillion yen from short-term debt securities, extending outflows for the third week in a row.

During the same time period, Japanese investors invested approximately 721 million yen in foreign stocks, marking their largest weekly net purchase in four weeks.

In addition, Japanese investors purchased around 297.1 billion yen of long-term overseas bonds, compared to approximately 541.6 billion yen of net disposals in the previous week. However, they sold approximately 39 billion yen in short-term debt products.