Most of us believe in a few odd things. But reading New Scientist last week, I was stunned to find just how many very odd things we believe in. A 2011 study showed that around 90% of the UK population hold at least one “delusional belief” to some extent.
They believe, for example, that they are “an exceptionally gifted person that others do not recognise” (40.5%); that their thoughts are “not fully under their control” (33.6%); that they are not “in control of some of their actions” (44%); and that “certain places are duplicated, ie, are in two different locations at the same time” (38.7%).
Until this election I would, I think, have dismissed this as nonsense. People, I would have said, just aren’t that silly. Now I’m not so sure. Through my door today came a leaflet from the SNP. It lays out how the party thinks.
The SNP, you see, has “a plan to invest in public services to end the need for austerity cuts”. You will immediately see the problems here. You don’t “invest” in public services. You spend on public services. And spending on public services doesn’t exactly end the need for UK public spending to fall: it just makes the need for it to fall more later larger. The only way rises in public spending would make it unnecessary to cut public spending would be if the rises somehow drove stunningly fast economic growth.
Some people believe this. But given that the state already spends some 45% of GDP in the UK, that the national debt has soared under this government, and that we have still barely grown for years, it seems to us to be remarkably unlikely.
So who would vote for a party that rests its nation’s entire future on the idea? Some 40% of Scotland, apparently, and some 35% of the rest of the UK (Ed Miliband’s economic policy adds up to much the same thing). Bit delusional isn’t it?
On to my own delusions. I have been keen on Japanese stocks, almost without break, since the launch of MoneyWeek. Over those years many of you have accused me of being wedded to an idea rather than a reality, and to being blinded to the awfulness of Japan’s corporate sector by my fondness for Japan itself. You may still be proved right, but delusion or not, being in Japan is working pretty well at the moment – the Nikkei 225 is up 15% so far this year.
That’s partly about Japan’s whopping money-printing programme, but it is also about corporate governance: a variety of new codes are focusing minds on shareholder value – and on dividends and buybacks in particular. Japan has a long way to go before it hits the dizzy heights of the US market: thanks to super-low interest-rate-financed buybacks, the S&P has hit not one, but 188 new highs in the last two years.
We’d much rather be invested in a market at the start of that cycle than the end of it. I’m sticking with my view – not (I think!) because I can’t leave long held but irrational beliefs behind me, but because it makes real sense. Sell the US. Buy Japan.