Foreign Bond Investment

Foreign Bond Investment is the market label for the long-term debt column in Japan's International Transactions in Securities (weekly and monthly cross-border securities reports). Published by the Ministry of Finance Japan (MoF), it records net purchases of foreign long-term bonds by Japanese residents, with no threshold or neutral level. It is compiled from designated major investors (large banks, securities firms, insurers and asset managers), not from every cross-border trade. The series uses its current form since January 2005 on an issuer-residence basis, with fund shares moved to equity and signs reversed in January 2014.

Weekly tables cover Sunday to Saturday; monthly tables split the month into days 1 to 10, 11 to 20, and 21 to end. Transactions enter acquisition, disposition and net columns on execution date, and redemptions on redemption date. Weekly figures appear on the fourth day after the week ends and monthly on the sixth day after month-end, at 8:50 AM Japan time (GMT+9). Each release shows resident and nonresident tables for equity, long-term debt, subtotal, short-term debt and total. The monthly cut adds 10-day splits and an investor appendix, stars mark revisions, and a Securities Issuance release lands the same day.

Published legs, headline sums and the monthly investor split put each bond print in context.

• Equity and investment fund shares: cross-border stock and fund transactions, including contractual investment trusts since January 2014, often moving against bonds.
• Long-term debt securities: net buying or selling of foreign bonds by residents, which is this indicator itself.
• Short-term debt securities: money-market bond flows that complete the total and reveal maturity rotation.
• Subtotal and total: summed nets that form the headline and can hide a large bond sell-off.
• Investor-type split: monthly breakdown showing which investors drove flows, from banks and insurers to asset managers and others.

The week of March 30 to April 5, 2025, brought foreign-bond net minus 25,726 on acquisitions of 149,006 and dispositions of 174,732 in ¥100 million. Equity net was plus 17,937 and short-term plus 1,144, giving a subtotal of minus 7,790 and a total of minus 6,646. At the same time nonresidents bought a net 27,988 of Japanese long-term bonds, about ¥2.80 trillion, while residents sold about ¥2.57 trillion of foreign bonds. The 1-unit gaps between published nets and subtracted acquisitions minus dispositions show totals may not sum from rounding.

1. Report: Each designated major investor reports acquisition (purchases) and disposition (sales) amounts by execution date, with bond redemptions in disposition by maturity at issuance.
2. Sum to net: MoF adds reports per cell in ¥100 million, with revised cells starred, so Foreign Bond Investment equals long-term acquisition minus long-term disposition. For example, acquisitions of 1,200 minus dispositions of 900 give a reading of plus 300 (¥30 billion).
3. Aggregate: Subtotal net equals equity net plus long-term net, while total net equals subtotal plus short-term net, using unrounded values before rounding. With equity net minus 100 and short-term plus 50, subtotal is plus 200 and total is plus 250, though rounded parts may differ by 1.
4. Sign and scope: Plus means net acquisition and minus means net disposition since January 2014, with no weighting, seasonal smoothing or yearly scaling applied. Before January 2014 the signs were reversed for resident foreign-security nets.