Business · 2026-10-30 · Morning briefing

Bank of Japan to quicken unwinding of its $228bn ETF pile

The Bank of Japan has decided to significantly accelerate the unwinding of its massive portfolio of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), a legacy of its multi-year campaign of aggressive monetary easing. The central bank will now more than double its annual sales pace as it begins to offload the substantial holdings, which carried a book value of $228.3 billion as of October 20th.

This strategic shift dramatically alters the timeline for normalising the bank's balance sheet. Under the previous, slower schedule, the process of selling the entire ETF position was projected to take an extraordinary 112 years to complete. With the new, faster pace, that forecast has been slashed to a comparatively brisk 43 years.

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