Japan
The boom in Japan’s inbound tourism is arguably the most tangible success story of Abenomics. Propelled by a steady stream of visa rule deregulation that started the first week that “Team Abe” moved into the prime minister’s office in December 2012, inbound tourist arrivals have risen almost fourfold, from a 2012 monthly average of 697,000 to 2.6 million recently.
On last week’s show, we had the pleasure of speaking with Nikolai Roussanov and Wesley Gray. Gray describes Roussanov as a Russian math genius who went to Harvard, and someone he studied with at the University of Chicago for his PhD. Roussanov came to Wharton in 2007—his first job out of graduate school—and his research has focused on global macro, foreign exchange, carry trades and commodity currencies, as well as fracking and oil.
Jeremy J Siegel
Senior Investment Strategy Advisor
Luciano Siracusano III
Chief Investment Strategist
Jonathan Steinberg
CEO of WisdomTree
Jesper Koll
WisdomTree's Head of Japan
Jeremy Schwartz, CFA
Director of Research
Christopher Gannatti, CFA
Head of Research, Europe
Christopher Gannatti began at WisdomTree as a Research Analyst in December 2010, working directly with Jeremy Schwartz, CFA®, Director of Research. In January of 2014, he was promoted to Associate Director of Research where he was responsible to lead different groups of analysts and strategists within the broader Research team at WisdomTree. In February of 2018, Christopher was promoted to Head of Research, Europe, where he will be based out of WisdomTree’s London office and will be responsible for the full WisdomTree research effort within the European market, as well as supporting the UCITs platform globally. Christopher came to WisdomTree from Lord Abbett, where he worked for four and a half years as a Regional Consultant. He received his MBA in Quantitative Finance, Accounting, and Economics from NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2010, and he received his bachelor’s degree from Colgate University in Economics in 2006. Christopher is a holder of the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
Kevin Flanagan
Senior Fixed Income Strategist
Bradley Krom
Associate Director of Research
Tripp Zimmerman, CFA
Associate Director of Research
Rick Harper
Head of Fixed Income & Currency
Gaurav Sinha
Asset Allocation Strategist
Anita Rausch
Head of Capital Markets
Michael Barrer
Senior Associate of Capital Markets
Paige Kyle
Capital Markets Associate
David Abner
Head of Europe
Christopher Carrano
Quantitative Research Analyst
Joseph Tenaglia, CFA
Asset Allocation Strategist
Jeff Weniger, CFA
Asset Allocation Strategist
Matt Wagner
Research Analyst
Alejandro Saltiel, CFA
Quantitative Research Analyst
Alejandro Saltiel joined WisdomTree as a Quantitative Research Analyst in May 2017. He is responsible for quantitative research on WisdomTree’s products and global equity markets. Prior to joining WisdomTree, Alejandro worked at HSBC Asset Management’s Mexico City office as Portfolio Manager for multi-asset mutual funds. He started his career working at a boutique hedge fund that specialized on trading options on sector-levered ETFs. Alejandro received his Master’s in Financial Engineering degree from Columbia University in 2017 and a Bachelor’s in Engineering degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in 2010. He is a holder of the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
Josh Russell, PhD, CFA
Quantitative Equity Strategist
Jeremy Schwartz recently spoke with Jawad Mian, editor of “ Stray Reflections,” and Richard Clarida, global strategic advisor to PIMCO and economics professor at Columbia, regarding their thoughts on policy action by the Federal Reserve (Fed), the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and the European Central Bank (ECB), as well as global implications for investing. Below I outline the key takeaways.
It is the time of year when economists and strategists present their forecasts and baseline scenarios for the year ahead, 2016. Quantitative forecasts are based on de facto probability models, and qualitative scenarios are based on, well, a combination of experience and common sense. Either way, most methodologies leave little room for a discussion of true outliers and surprises.
Last week, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe presented an update on his economic policy priorities for 2016 and beyond. The new details of Japan’s “Abenomics 2.0” policy discussion suggest to us that structural growth policy is very much moving in the right direction, with Team Abe making concrete progress on building credible alliances with business leaders for his growth strategy.
The Bank of Japan decided to maintain its steady policy course this week, very much in line with consensus expectations. However, its policy statement did add a twist to a previously mentioned sentence.