Foreign investors sell ¥1.25T in Japanese bonds while snapping up ¥621B in stocks

Foreign investors dumped ¥1.25 trillion worth of Japanese government bonds last week while simultaneously buying ¥621 billion in Japanese equities. The data, drawn from Japan’s Ministry of Finance weekly tracking of international securities transactions, captures one of the more dramatic shifts in foreign capital flows in recent months. The numbers in context To put ¥1.25 trillion in perspective, that’s roughly $8.5 billion at recent exchange rates. MoF data from the broader July through August 2026 period shows foreign investment activity has been choppy, with weekly flows oscillating between net purchases and net sales in the hundreds of billions of yen. But the scale of last week’s bond liquidation stands out even against that volatile backdrop. For the specific week of August 2 through 8, the picture gets more nuanced. Foreign investors actually recorded net dispositions of ¥368.5 billion in equities during that window, alongside comparatively smaller net movements in long-term debt. Short-term debt securities saw net inflows during the same stretch, suggesting that investors were deploying diverse strategies rather than making a single directional bet. The MoF compiles this da...