Foreigners have piled into Japan’s stock market — now more locals are being encouraged to invest

At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting last week, Warren Buffett reaffirmed his bet on Japan’s trading houses — now a combined 9.3% of Berkshire’s stock portfolio, its fifth-largest holding. His successor and soon-to-be CEO of the conglomerate, Greg Abel, said they could hold the stakes “50 years or forever.”

That mindset, though, is hardly the norm back home in Japan. For decades, the culture of hoarding cash instead of investing took hold among older generations, haunted by the 1990s asset bubble burst, when overheated stock and property markets crashed and burned. Indeed, ~54% of Japanese households keep their assets in cash or deposits today — compared to just 13% in the US and 31% in the UK — per The Economist, leaving plenty of room for overseas buyers to step in.

According to Tokyo Stock Exchange’s latest data, foreign investors now own 32% of Japan’s stock market, up sharply from 5% in the 1970s, while locals hold just 17%. And the gap might keep growing: as US stocks slumped amid tariff threats in April, foreign investors pumped a net $8.3 billion (¥1.2 trillion) into Japanese equities — a sharp reversal from net outflows in the previous two months, per data from Japan Exchange Group.

Lower the bar

Now, Japan is trying to lure its young, less trauma-ridden locals back into the market. The Tokyo Stock Exchange plans to lower the minimum investment threshold, aiming to make stocks more accessible, while the government expanded tax exemptions for retail investors last year. It’s also promoting financial literacy among millennials and Gen Zs. All of this might be starting to pay off: according to the Investment Trusts Association, 36% of people in their 20s in Japan invested in mutual funds, stocks, and bonds last year, up nearly 3x from 2016.