As of August 25, 2026, Japan’s 10-year JGB yielded 2.897% and the 40-year 4.060% — prices set through Ministry of Finance auctions, roughly 20 primary dealers, and Bank of Japan operations. Here is how the world’s most-watched sovereign bond market actually works, how to read the curve, and why equity investors abroad track it daily.
The NT ratio — the Nikkei 225 divided by TOPIX — is Tokyo’s cheapest leadership gauge, and it was on display on August 21, 2026, when the Nikkei fell while the broad market rose. Here is how to compute it, why price weighting lets a handful of high-priced stocks like Fast Retailing move the spread, what high and low readings signal about market leadership, and how professionals trade the NT spread with OSE futures.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange has no market-wide circuit breaker. Instead, every stock trades inside a fixed daily yen band set by its price tier — about ±17% for a ¥5,000–7,000 stock — while special quotes pause matching and Osaka futures halt for roughly 10 minutes at their limits. Here is how each layer works and how to read a limit-down stock on the tape.
The BOJ’s Outlook (Tenbo) Report, published at the January, April, July and October policy meetings, moves markets through three channels: revisions to the median core-CPI forecast, the risk-balance language, and named board dissents. Here is how to read each one — and why the forecast table often matters more than the rate decision itself.
Seven numbers tell you most of what matters in Japanese equities each day: the Nikkei-TOPIX (NT) ratio, USD/JPY, the TSE short-selling ratio (37-45% over the past week), weekly investor flows, JGB yields, US chip stocks, and three bellwether stocks — here is where each lives and how to read it.
SQ (Special Quotation) is the settlement price for Nikkei 225 futures and options, computed from the opening auction prints of all 225 constituents on the second Friday of each contract month. Quarterly ‘major SQ’ Fridays — March, June, September, December — produce some of the largest opening volume prints of the year, and much of that turnover reflects settlement-related hedging rather than fresh directional views. Here is how the mechanics work and how to read the numbers.
Japan’s ‘core CPI’ strips out only fresh food — not energy — and it is the series the Bank of Japan’s 2% target is judged against. Here is how to read headline vs core vs core-core, why Tokyo CPI leads the national print by a month, and how each release feeds through to JGB yields, the yen, and equity sectors.
Japan’s Ministry of Finance decides currency intervention and the Bank of Japan merely executes it, funded from the Foreign Exchange Fund Special Account. Traders track a three-step escalation — scripted verbal warnings, rate checks, then actual yen-buying — and confirm operations after the fact through MOF’s monthly disclosures and BoJ current-account projections. Here is the full mechanism.
The Nikkei 225 tells you what Japan’s most expensive stocks did; TOPIX tells you what the market did. A practical guide to price weighting, the NT ratio, and reading divergences between Japan’s two benchmark indices.
Why a weaker yen historically lifts Toyota, Sony, and the Nikkei — and when it stops working. A practical guide to the translation channel, assumed exchange rates, and reading USD/JPY alongside the Tokyo close.