Stock Investment by Foreigners

Stock Investment by Foreigners is net foreign investment in Japanese stocks. Its source is International Transactions in Securities (ITS), a Ministry of Finance program tracking cross-border securities transactions since January 2005. The signal is the Equity and investment fund shares Net column in Section 2, Portfolio Investment Liabilities, which covers nonresidents' transactions in Japan. It is a census of designated major investors, not a sample, and it excludes direct investment (control stakes) and reserve assets (central-bank holdings).

Each weekly record covers 1 calendar week running Sunday to Saturday. Weekly data cover 1 week and appear on the 4th day of the next week, normally Thursday at 8:50 AM Japan Standard Time (JST, UTC+9). Monthly data cover 1 month and appear on the 6th day of the next month. The weekly release shows residents' purchases abroad alongside nonresidents' purchases in Japan, while the monthly release adds 10-day splits and investor-type detail.

Holiday weeks can shift a release by 1 day or merge 2 weeks into one release. The schedule can change without notice, and English texts may appear later than Japanese ones. Figures marked with an asterisk (*) are revised values from earlier weeks.

The table shows nonresidents' Japanese securities in 5 columns, and the publisher applies no weights: each column is a straight sum of reported contracts.

• Equity and investment fund shares: nonresidents' purchases and sales of Japanese stocks plus fund shares; its Net is this indicator.
• Long-term debt securities: nonresidents' transactions in Japanese medium- and long-term bonds.
• Subtotal: equity-and-fund-shares Net plus long-term-debt Net.
• Short-term debt securities: nonresidents' transactions in Japanese short-term paper such as Treasury bills.
• Total: Subtotal Net plus short-term-debt Net, the all-securities headline.

In the week of January 21 to 27, 2024, nonresidents acquired 196,800 and disposed 189,590 in equity and fund shares, leaving Net plus 7,210. That equals plus 721.0 billion yen of net buying. In the same week, long-term-debt Net was minus 2,180 and short-term-debt Net was minus 23,371. Subtotal Net was plus 5,031, but Total Net was minus 18,341 (minus 1,834.1 billion yen), because bill sales outweighed stock buying.

The lesson is that the stocks signal lives only in the equity column, never in the total, with one-unit gaps from rounding. The largest weekly net purchase was plus 23,689 in the week of April 2 to 8, 2023. The largest net sale was minus 30,255 in the week of September 17 to 23, 2023.

1. Acquisition and disposition: collect contract amounts by execution date for each column, in units of 100 million yen. Record bond redemptions under disposition as of the redemption date, split by original maturity. There is no seasonal adjustment and no annualisation.
2. Net: subtract disposition from acquisition, so Net equals A minus D. A plus sign (+) means net buying and a minus sign (−) means net selling.
3. Subtotal, Total and rounding: add equity Net and long-term-debt Net for Subtotal Net, then add short-term-debt Net for Total Net. Published totals may not add exactly because of rounding.
4. Illustrative example: if acquisition is 200,000 (= 20 trillion yen) and disposition is 190,000 (= 19 trillion yen), Net is plus 10,000. That is plus 1 trillion yen of net buying.