BOJ Finishes Offloading Bank Stocks, Bringing Focus to ETFs

The Bank of Japan finished selling millions of dollars of stocks it bought from besieged banks during a domestic banking crisis in the early 2000s and the later Lehman Shock, ending a nearly two-decade process and bringing closer market attention to the fate of its much bigger pile of exchange-traded funds.

The BOJ’s holdings of the shares purchased from banks hit zero as of July 10, falling from ¥2.5 billion ($17.4 million) 10 days ago, according to its balance sheet report Monday. It’s well ahead of a self-imposed deadline of March next year, although the milestone was expected to happen around this time after a steady drop of roughly ¥10 billion per month in recent years.