They may break out the caps on Wall Street when the Dow Jones rises through thousand-point barriers, but it might be time for Japanese investors to pull out their Spinal Tap t-shirts – because this rally has gone to 11.
Things were looking a bit shaky for the Topix during the afternoon session on Friday. The yen trimmed its early decline, which dragged the Japanese stock market into negative territory, before staging a late recovery. The Topix and the Nikkei 225 finished 0.3 per cent higher on Friday.
The 11th straight session of gains for the Topix index is the Japanese benchmark’s longest winning streak since pulling off 12 in a row from May to early June in 2015, according to Financial Times analysis of daily Bloomberg data. The Nikkei 225 has closed higher for a respectable seven sessions in a row.
Up 12.6 per cent over this period, the Topix has had a much stronger than streaks of equal and longer length. But this run for the Topix ranks quite favourably in the pantheon of market endurance.
Over the past 30 years, there have been only a handful of other stretches that have gone on for longer. Top of the table is the 15-day run from February to March in 1998, followed by 13 sessions from July to August 2009 and then last year’s 12-day streak.
At the moment, this is one of three 11-day winning streaks over the past three decades.
Winding the clock back further to 1949, the limit of the Bloomberg data, there are a total of 10 11-day winning streaks (including this November), four 12-day runs, four 13-day runs, two 14-day runs, three 15 day runs and two 17-day streaks.
Over the past three weeks, the yen has strengthened in only three of 15 sessions. Last Friday, the US dollar index ruled off on a 10-session winning streak, one of its longest on record.
The Topix and the Nikkei 225 both gained 2.9 per cent in a holiday-shortened trading week. It was the third straight week of gains for both equities gauges.
