Yomiuri Stock Index to Launch in March; 333 Companies to be Equally Weighted

The Yomiuri Shimbun

5:00 JST, November 28, 2024

The Yomiuri Shimbun will establish a new stock price index, The Yomiuri Stock Index, in March 2025. The index, also dubbed the Yomiuri 333, will indicate the movement of stock prices and is aimed at expanding the range of options for investors by developing a new benchmark for the Japanese economy.

With the new project designed to encourage domestic and foreign investment in Japanese companies, The Yomiuri Shimbun will make a contribution to a virtuous economic cycle that widely returns the fruits of corporate growth to the people in addition to investors.

The Yomiuri 333 will be provided in collaboration with a major financial group, and will be composed of 333 companies that represent Japan and are among the names listed on stock exchanges in the country. Along with the Tokyo Stock Price Index (TOPIX) and the Nikkei Stock Average (Nikkei 225), the Yomiuri 333 will become a stock index demonstrating Japan’s economic strength. The unit of measurement for the new index will be the Japanese yen.

The key feature of the Yomiuri 333 is that it will adopt the equal weighting method in calculating the index, in which all 333 companies’ stocks are incorporated in the same proportion. The new index will exhibit average price movements of the constituent stocks, making it less susceptible to the movements of large corporations or specific companies by equally incorporating the movements of all the 333 companies’ stocks.

Equal-weighted indices have been used overseas but have not been widely adopted in Japan. TOPIX is a capitalization-weighted index, which tends to reflect the size of a company’s market capitalization, and the price movements of large companies have a significant impact on it. The Nikkei 225 is a price-weighted index, which can be influenced by the price movements of certain stocks with high share prices because it is calculated using the share price of each constituent stock.

Unlike these indices, the Yomiuri 333 aims at equally reflecting the price movements of a wider range of stocks. Investors will be able to grasp the degree of economic growth in Japan through the Yomiuri 333 if the economy continues to grow over the long term. For investors, the available options for asset building will be broadened by using the Yomiuri 333 as it will become a new benchmark for understanding economic trends in the country.

A major asset management company is preparing to develop financial products linked to the Yomiuri 333, including investment trusts, from the spring of 2025 or later. The Yomiuri Shimbun also aims for the Yomiuri 333 to be an index that will be used for the new NISA, or Nippon Individual Savings Account, a tax-exempt program for small investments by individuals. Investment trusts linked to the index are also expected to be created. The Yomiuri Shimbun supports long-term, stable asset creation for the people by offering an index corresponding to long-term, cumulative and diversified investments.