In late February, Nomura Securities, Japan’s biggest brokerage house, took the highly unusual step of inviting journalists into its headquarters in the heart of Tokyo’s financial district. Employees ushered them to the inner sanctum of its equities trading floor — a quietly frenetic, L-shaped chamber, usually strictly off limits to outside eyes.
But this day was different. The Nikkei 225 Average of major Japanese stocks had been on a powerful rally since January and, closely followed by Japanese media and the general public, was about to smash through its all-time high — a level set in 1989, at the peak of the biggest stock bubble in human history.
But history, Nomura sensed, was finally about to be overtaken by momentum.