The always good fun Albert Edwards at Societe General.
We have always exhorted our readers to watch Japan closely as it has consistently been a forerunner of major market moves (eg the late 1990s tech bubble started to deflate first in Japan). Until the implosion of the yen carry trade in early August, there was very little investor interest in Japan. That has now changed.
As we move into September and parents of school age children return to their desks for a well-earned rest, equity investors looking at their screens will be forgiven for thinking that very little has happened. The early-August meltdown is now a distant memory with equity indices having quickly rebounded back to all-time highs. But that insouciance stands in stark contrast to foreign exchange and government bond markets which have not strayed very far from their 5 August, crisis extremes.
