Investing in Japan: Only the 'cockroaches' survive

Economist and renowned commentator on Japan, Arcus Investment's Peter Tasker, said in the last 20 years the country has been through the most severe and prolonged bear market ever seen.

The key to surviving as an investor in these markets was to follow a value strategy, and to adopt the characteristics of a ‘cockroach’, Tasker said. Speaking at a SocGen conference this week, the economist described the after effects of Japan’s ‘Lost Decade’ for equities: “For the last 20 years I have been living in the largest, most severe bear market ever seen. A real bear market is stocks crashing and staying crashed. A generation is wiped out and does not come back, an entire asset class is discredited. At some point, fundamentals improve, but nothing happens because no-one is there,...