No prizes for guessing what triggered this halt on short-selling. From Reuters on Monday:
Several Japanese Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) triggered the newly created short-sale restriction shortly after the market’s open on Monday.
The Securities and Exchange Commission implemented the short-sale related circuit breaker, in part, to prevent potentially manipulative or abusive short selling.
Some of the ETFs involved:
- The PowerShares Global Nuclear Energy Portfolio
- ProShares Ultra MSCI Japan
- iShares MSCI Japan Small Cap Index Fund
- SPDR Russell Nomura Small Cap Japan
According to ConvegEx Market on Monday, the iShares MSCI Japan ETF had received $1.2bn in new capital since the start of 2011 — the third highest in terms of incremental investment amongst US ETFs. (At pixel time it was down 8.8 per cent and the MSCI Japan small cap was down 9.5 per cent.)
Thus it could be a small but interesting barometer of investor opinion on Japan’s near-term future in the next few weeks.
Related links:
Japan live blog – FT