Lucky guesses, or something more?
The quarterly results season in Japan, which reached its peak last week, has been notable for the re-emergence of a notorious feature of the world’s second-biggest equity market: companies’ results trailed days in advance on the pages of the Nikkei newspaper.
In some countries this might have authorities muttering about disclosure violations, or a lack of equal access to price-sensitive information. But in Japan, regulators seem to have turned a blind eye to the “Nikkei previews”, allowing stories to appear and then, within a few hours, letting companies issue rote statements saying the stories are not based on anything they have announced.