< The 2016 All-Japan Research Team

Natsumu Tsujino
J.P. Morgan
First-place appearances: 2

Total appearances: 16

Team debut: 2003

Rebounding to third place, the position she held in 2014, J.P. Morgan’s Natsumu Tsujino advances from runner-up on the strength of her “detailed analyses of trends and issues, such as new central bank policies,” as one fund manager says. Another advocate echoes that sentiment, offering that ”she is especially helpful for understanding complicated situations.” In October, aiming to shore up the yield curve, the Bank of Japan increased its purchases of certain superlong Japanese Government Bonds, as part of its regular debt-buying stimulus scheme. That move, combined with the diminished risk of yen appreciation and low valuations, prompted Tsujino in January to reiterate her outperform ratings on a pair of Tokyo-headquartered property/casualty insurers: MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings and Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdings. For the trailing 12 months the stocks respectively had climbed 12.3 percent and 11.7 percent, to ¥3,225 and ¥3,519, against the broad domestic market’s loss of less than 1 percent. By mid-March, however, MS&AD had slipped 7.6 percent, to ¥2,978; while Sompo Japan had dropped 11.5 percent, to ¥3,115. During the same period, Japan’s shares overall fell 6.4 percent. Even so, over the coming year, they could rise to ¥5,300 and ¥5,600, respectively, the researcher believes. She covers 17 Japanese insurance and nonbank financial firms, three more than a year ago.