Things in Japan are looking grim. They keep getting grimmer, and it doesn't seem they will be getting less grim anytime soon. To give you some idea of what this means, only this week we learnt that Japan’s steel production fell 28 percent in December. This was the steepest decline in no less than six decades. Meanwhile Hiroshi Yoshikawa, Tokyo University professor and head of the Japanese government business cycle measurement committee said that Japan’s present recession may become the longest in the postwar era.

As well as the big sharks of the financial world, many smaller fish slip through the financial seas, quietly and unobtrusively doing their business, until they become big fish in their own right. One of these has been the SPARX Group, founded 20 years ago, based out of Japan, which had about JPY1.7 tln in assets under management in 2006. These assets are managed on behalf of a number of institutional investors, based on principles learned from George Soros by the SPARX founder, Shuhei Abe when Abe managed Soros’s Japanese investments.

So why is the yen remaining so high?