Kishida Willing to Recommend Yomiuri’s New Stock Index; Yomiuri 333 Discussed at LDP Lawmaker Group Meeting

The Yomiuri Shimbun

7:00 JST, February 6, 2025

Former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Wednesday that he will urge the Financial Services Agency to consider integrating Yomiuri 333 — a new stock index to be launched next month by The Yomiuri Shimbun — to Japan’s investment vehicle as a benchmark.

Kishida discussed the idea as the chair of a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers on promoting investment, when it held a general meeting at the party headquarters in Tokyo. He played a key role in significantly expanding the Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA) investment program last year. Under this scheme, gains on small investments are exempted from tax.

Kishida said that integrating Yomiuri 333, which is comprised of the stocks of 333 Japanese companies, to the NISA program as a benchmark is desirable because it will bring new financial instruments to the market, thus providing a wider range of options for investors.

“I hope that new efforts will be made to enable the new NISA program to better benefit the public by taking advantage of Yomiuri 333 as a new benchmark,” he said.

If Yomiuri 333 becomes a benchmark for NISA, people can invest in financial instruments linked to the index within the program’s tax-free holding limit for savings-type investment. Currently, there are only four benchmarks comprised of Japanese stocks, including TOPIX and the Nikkei 225 stock average, in contrast to 11 comprised of overseas stocks.

During Wednesday’s meeting, Toshikazu Yamaguchi, president of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings, discussed Yomiuri 333’s features, saying the new index will adopt the “equal-weighting method,” in which the price movements of the 333 companies nationwide are equally reflected. This means that investment in financial instruments linked to this index will not just benefit major companies, he added.