① Affected by the Bank of Japan's interest rate hike, SoftBank Group's stock price plummeted for two consecutive days, and its total share price fell by about 14%; ② SoftBank founder Sun Zhengyi's wealth also fell 2.5 billion dollars within two days; ③ By the close of Friday (August 2), the Nikkei 225 Index had a single-day decline of 5.81%, the biggest one-day decline since March 2020.
Financial Services Association, August 2 (Editor: Zhou Ziyi) Affected by the Bank of Japan's interest rate hike earlier than expected, SoftBank Group's stock price plummeted for two consecutive days, causing the wealth value of its founder Sun Zhengyi to shrink by 2.5 billion dollars.
SoftBank closed down 8.03% in the Tokyo stock market on Friday (August 2). Over the past two trading days, its stock price has dropped by about 14% in total.
According to data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Sun Zhengyi's wealth also fell by 2.5 billion dollars in two days. However, even after experiencing a sharp decline, Sun Zhengyi's wealth still increased by about 4 billion US dollars compared to 11.3 billion US dollars at the beginning of the year.
SoftBank Group is one of the world's largest investors in technology stocks. By the end of July, the company's stock price had risen 46%. This has mainly benefited from the sharp rise in shares of its chipmaker Arm Holdings Plc this year, as people expect Arm to profit from their passion for artificial intelligence.
However, Arm's stock price fell sharply by 16% on Thursday (August 1), as the company maintained its current annual revenue forecast in the performance report and did not raise the forecast, which disappointed investors. As a parent company, SoftBank's stock price also plummeted 6.62% on Thursday.
“Massive earthquake” in the Japanese market
This comes at a time when the Japanese stock market is in sharp turmoil. As of Friday's close, the Nikkei 225 index fell 5.81% in a single day, falling for the second day in a row. This is also the index's biggest one-day decline since March 2020. Meanwhile, Sun Zhengyi, a billionaire, became one of the hardest-hit tycoons in this round of Japanese stock fluctuations.
Since the Bank of Japan announced the tightening of monetary policy on Wednesday, although Japanese stocks are one of the best performing markets in the world this year, they have also begun to fluctuate greatly.
Since this year, against the backdrop of a weak yen and a rebound in global technology stocks, earlier, the Tokyo Stock Exchange Index and the Nikkei 225 Index both broke the dust record of more than 30 years and reached record highs.
However, in recent weeks, as global technology stocks have begun to falter, and concerns about the Bank of Japan's policy path have intensified, the previous gains in Japanese stocks have been eroded. As a result, Japanese stocks fell into an even worse situation after the Bank of Japan announced interest rate hikes and downsizing on Wednesday.
Other analysts pointed out that the rise in Japanese stocks in the past was mainly driven by three major factors, namely the weak yen favoring exports, the gradual normalization of monetary policy, and corporate governance reforms. This has benefited many blue-chip exporters and bank stocks over the past period of time. At this stage, however, investors are turning their attention to Japanese small and medium-sized companies that focus more on the local market.
A stronger yen also means that SoftBank's international business will be at risk. Sun Zhengyi is currently SoftBank's largest shareholder, and most of his shares are used as collateral for loans to various financial institutions.