Guides

Nikkei SQ Days: Why Second-Friday Settlement Turns Tokyo Volatile

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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 Core CPI vs Core-Core: The Number Behind the BoJ’s 2% Target

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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 Yen Intervention 2026: How MOF Orders It, BoJ Executes, Signals to Watch

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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.

Why Semiconductor Stocks Steer the Nikkei: Index Weights and Japan’s Chip Strategy

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The Nikkei 225 is a price-weighted average, so a handful of high-priced chip names can move the whole index far more than their economic size suggests. This guide explains the mechanics, contrasts the Nikkei with TOPIX, walks through a real worked example, and shows how Japan’s semiconductor policy reinforces the sector’s outsized market role.