Weekly "Focus" and Ohtani vs Trout

Bradley Goldhar - Mar 24, 2023
World Baseball Classic

We had another classic sporting moment this week when superstar Shohei Ohtani of Team Japan struck out superstar Mike Trout of Team USA to clinch the World Baseball Classic. Team Japan has now won the tournament three times. The fact that the players are teammates on the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball made it that much more exciting. Shohei Ohtani has numerous sponsorship deals, including one from Mitsubishi Bank, the fourth largest component of the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ-US). EWJ is an easy way to track the performance of the Japanese stock market and so far this year it has gained approx. 4.6%, besting the S&P 500 up just over 3% (i). Here is the summary of the five largest components of the ETF:

 

Company (Symbol)

Sector

Price Return in 2023

Dividend Yield

Toyota Motor (7203)

Consumer

-1.6%

3.0%

Sony (6758)

Consumer

+15.6%

0.6%

Keyence (6861)

Technology

+21.1%

0.5%

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial (8306)

Financials

-6.6%

3.9%

Daiichi Sankyo (4568)

Health Care

+9.9%

0.6%

8306-TKSSource: FactSet, Values as of March 24

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Brad 

Bradley Goldhar | Senior Portfolio Manager and Senior Investment Advisor

Source: (i) FactSet