Global X ETFs Australia has launched the Japan TOPIX 100 ETF (ASX: J100), which provides access to Japan’s largest and most established companies via the Japan TOPIX 100 Index.
The new fund is the only Australian ETF to track Japan’s Topix 100 Total Return Index, which is a subset of the broader TOPIX (Tokyo Stock Price Index), representing the 100 largest and most liquid companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
With a management expense ratio of 0.4 per cent, it is also the cheapest Australian ETF providing access exclusively to Japanese companies.
The fund includes well-known companies such as Toyota, Sony, Nintendo and Canon, as well as companies involved in semiconductors, robotics and automation, and nuclear energy, including Hitachi, Softbank, Tokyo Electron and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a nuclear reactor construction specialist, which has outperformed Nvidia over the one and five-year periods.
Global X senior product and investment strategist Marc Jocum said Japan was “hitting its stride” following a more than three-decade period of recovery since its 1989 share market peak, powered by corporate reform, a sharper focus on delivering value to shareholders and deep integration across global supply chains and megatrends like artificial intelligence.
“Japan is home to some of the world’s best-known brands and with the country’s recent shift from decades of deflationary stagnation to sustainable earnings growth, now is the time for investors to pay attention,” Jocum said.
“Tracking the top 100 names in Japan’s marquee index, J100 is the lowest-cost ETF in Australia to capture the core of Japan’s equity market and provide access to a basket of blue-chip, high-quality names.”
The Japan TOPIX 100 ETF is the seventh ETF to be launched this year by Global X, which now has 48 such funds listed, and it will sit alongside a number of other global ETFs, including the India Nifty 50 ETF (NDIA), EURO STOXX 50 ETF (ESTX) and China Tech ETF (DRGN).
The manager introduced the Global X S&P Australia GARP ETF in October.