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Owning Half of Japan's ETF Market Might Not Be Enough for Kuroda

Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan. — Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan.
Photographer: Junko Kimura-Matsumoto/Bloomberg

By

Yuji Nakamura and

October 28, 2015, 10:17 PM UTCUpdated onOctober 29, 2015, 12:17 AM UTC

Japan’s central bank already owns more than half of the nation’s market for exchange-traded stock funds, and that might just be the start.

The Bank of Japan will boost stimulus on Friday, according to 16 of 36 economists in Bloomberg’s latest survey, with 12 saying it would do so by increasing its annual ETF-buying budget. With 3 trillion yen ($25 billion) a year in existing firepower, the BOJ has accumulated an ETF stash that accounted for 52 percent of the entire market at the end of September, figures from Tokyo’s stock exchange show.