A man looks at a mobile phone in front of the Bank of Japan building in Tokyo, Japan June 16, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File PhotoIndex-based products still dominate the universe of Japan-focused ETFs, both in number and assets under management. But issuers of more recent and still-small actively managed ETFs say they used the selloff to do what index funds cannot: cherry pick for their portfolios at a discount the companies they believe will outperform long term.
Japan is fertile ground for active stock picking because the largest Japanese stocks do not dominate major indexes the way the"Magnificent Seven" tech stocks do in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, Takeuchi told Reuters on the latest episode of Inside ETFs. "This is a market with thousands of stocks, relatively shallow analyst coverage focusing on the biggest cap companies and lots of nuance, and all of that favors active stock-picking," said Philip Wool, one of the Rayliant portfolio managers for the new ETF.
For most of the last 18 months, Japan's indexes rocketed to new highs as the yen slid and corporate governance reforms drove up dividends and buybacks. Daiki Hayashi, head of Japan sales and marketing at J.P. Morgan in Tokyo, said that now the focus is shifting to individual stocks instead of market indexes. Managers are finding stocks they believe are poised to grow more rapidly and outperform benchmarks, typical behavior in a prolonged bull market, investors and market analysts said.
WisdomTree Investments still prefers to offer index-based ETFs, but builds its own quantitative benchmarks that focus on value elements, said Jeremy Schwartz, the firm's global chief investment officer. That permits a degree of customization without allowing subjective decision-making on the part of portfolio managers, he said.
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