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Today Nikkei 225 closed at +246 points - a robust growth after several weeks of an almost free fall. Growth was lead by banking and automotive industry. This can be seen as a good sign of revival, but is it necessarily so? First of all, what are the most frequently cited causes? Most obvious is the fact that US markets closed higher on Friday. Behind this increase were increased retail sales and expectation of further growth in the wake of the year-end holidays. Another reason mentioned is the weakening yen. However, it actually strengthened today, so this was hardly the reason of the index growth. So, the most important factor that moved Nikkei up was a purely domestic US information. It is really amazing how susceptible Japan is to the influence of changes in American economic situation. Especially, when one considers how tightly closed to outsiders Japanese economy still is, especially when it comes to foreign companies entry into Japanese market. May it be that by having open finan

Good night, everyone, welcome to the iBanker Nightly! The idea to start this blog came to me after about a year of relating my investment banking experience in a leading Japanese securities house in another blog knarkh.livejournal.com . This blog will be different in several respects: 1. This blog will be more professional. Main topics that I intend to cover will be investment banking and financial markets in general, their specifics in Japan, and business between Japan and Europe/Russia. 2. I hope this blog will become a place of discussions and knowledge sharing on the subjects metioned above. 3. Most obviously, the primary language of this blog will be English, although posts in Russian and Japanese will occasionally appear where relevant. Why iBanker Nightly? First of all, investment banking is an industry of notoriously long working hours, so many posts will appear late into the night. Secondly, as I am in Japan, my daytime posts will appear at night for the readers in the U.S. We