October 5, 2025
This post is inspired by a desire to remember a more creative betting game that is meant to be played with friends. Unfortunately I can’t find the original authors post on it to credit them because everywhere you search anything with the word “betting” in your query is filled with promotional spam, advertising, or gain/loss […]
Read moreSeptember 22, 2025
The most important job of the BOJ is to buy Japanese government bonds (JGBs) and stash them away, thus limiting supply in the market. This activity serves the dual purpose of keeping the government funded and keeping interest rates lower, so a minimal amount of the federal budget (~24.4%) can be used to service existing […]
Read moreAugust 22, 2025
Quotes are always a good way to get thinking before diving into a blog post, here are a few good ones: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”– F. Scott Fitzgerald “Sometimes, magic is just […]
Read moreAugust 6, 2025
Exploring the energy requirements of AI, reviewing growth predictions in light of current supply and known supply coming online. A review of Great Power energy policies and implications for their AI industry. “Most investors spend the bulk of their time trying to forecast future demand for the companies they follow. The aviation analyst will try […]
Read moreJuly 10, 2025
The BOJ owns approximately half of all outstanding JGBs and is the dominant buyer of government debt, giving her a crucial role in supporting JGB prices and ensuring pension funds, banks, insurance companies, and other institutions stay solvent. The blatant and simultaneous issuance and purchase of debt of the government with freshly created bank reserves […]
Read moreMarch 4, 2025
One of my recent projects with Spring Creek Web Design has been building an options trading log. You can check it out over at IotaTradingLog.com soon. Almost everyone has a friend, family member, or acquaintance who got sucked into financial markets during 2020-21, and the explosion in retail participation is evident in the data. See […]
Read moreJanuary 17, 2025
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) doesn’t have any recent experience with raising interest rates. Since the legendary bubble of the late 80’s popped rates have been on a one way street to zero, until recently (Chart 1). A similar phenomenon has been experienced in the United States as well. Volker raising rates to break the […]
Read moreJanuary 7, 2025
The foundation of every economy is the people, at least for now. Economic data at it’s core is modeling the actions of individuals and corporate actors, GDP is the measure of goods and services output by a country’s people, and inflation is a metric of how much money people are spending on goods and services. […]
Read moreDecember 30, 2024
Newly appointed Bank of Japan (BoJ) governor, Ueda Kazuo has guided the bank through a year marked with moderate inflation, Yen depreciation, and the end of negative interest rates in Japan. Governor Ueda seems intent on shrinking the BoJ balance sheet. In the past twelve months the bank has stopped buying ETFs and JREITs, decreased […]
Read moreDecember 11, 2024
I’m taking a departure from the Japan focused writing to focus on some financial engineering history. German ‘MEFO’ bills were instrumental in re-arming Nazi Germany without technically violating the Treaty of Versailles or causing widespread price inflation. The careful issuance of MEFO bills by central bank president Schacht was the catalyst to restart German industry […]
Read moreNovember 25, 2024
How the Bank of Japan has acted post US election. Almost three weeks ago Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Unsurprisingly, global markets reacted. Would they have reacted differently had Harris won? Hard to say. It is undebatable that JGB yields have slide back into the brown zone – a confusing place […]
Read moreOctober 31, 2024
This post will center around the data wrangling required to create a comprehensive database of BOJ JGB holding reports (2001 – present). I don’t do this professionally, though maybe(?) I would enjoy it, so don’t expect best practices here. The methods used to download, clean, combine, and check data are described below. To start, let’s […]
Read moreOctober 23, 2024
A little over a month ago I wrote Room to Breathe, a piece in which I noted how the recent Yen strength and 10-year JGB demand was making things easy for the MOF & BOJ. In the same piece I also predicted that the Yen would continue to strengthen as JGB/UST spreads narrow due to […]
Read moreOctober 2, 2024
When someone tells you something is wrong, they’re probably right. When they tell you how to fix it, they’re probably wrong. Recently there has been a lot of attention on the relatively weak Japanese Yen, few deny this is a problem for Japanese savers, consumers, and thus politicians. The range of remedies prescribed by politicians, […]
Read moreSeptember 28, 2024
Common and fungible things are often considered boring due to the fact they are common and fungible. As a general rule people’s interest in something increases with the rarity, and things that are unique get studied and coveted by the richest and smartest in society. Commodities fall into the common and fungible, thus boring, invisible, […]
Read moreSeptember 17, 2024
Finally, the BOJ and MOF can lean back. This piece will explain why I think the Japanese Yen and JGB markets are temporarily under control. An overview: Quick Background Fashionably late is right on time, and no one cares about appearances more than the US Fed. Entering 2024 big banks and speculators were confident the […]
Read moreJuly 26, 2024
I love grandiose plans and complicated schemes fraught with deception, backdoor deals, and intrigue. Even better if there is some reality to the story. Arthur Hayes recently wrote a wonderful set of essays that turn mundane central banker activity into the center of politics, power, and international deals for the benefit of the established political […]
Read moreJuly 12, 2024
For Christmas I asked my Grandma for a Raspberry Pi. Six months later it had gathered a healthy coat of dust, and I felt like I was disappointing Grandma. This woman isn’t your normal older person. She worked on programming NASA space missions, only using assembly code, but nowadays is just as technologically illiterate as […]
Read moreJune 21, 2024
If you’re into Japanese economic policy, 2024 has been a fun year. Events in the currency and bond markets have triggered responses from the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the Bank of Japan (BOJ). Or maybe actions by the MOF and BOJ have triggered responses in the currency and bond markets? With USDJPY reaching for […]
Read moreJune 12, 2024
Since 2020 I’ve had the time and curious desire to learn more about central banks and economics. Like so many others, I took an interest in markets, stocks, the Federal Reserve, and money printer memes when the pandemic lock downs and ensuing stimulus drove these things into the spotlight. Questions around central banks and how […]
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