Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), speaks during a press conference at the LDP headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, on February 9, 2026. <\/p>\n
Franck Robicho | Anadolu | Getty Images<\/p>\n
There’s nearly nothing that apparently can’t be deployed as a trading strategy. We have the “TACO” trade, the Fed put trade, the artificial intelligence trade and, now, capturing traders’ attention is the “Takaichi trade<\/a>” \u2014 fueled by Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s landslide victory in Sunday’s elections. <\/p>\n The Takaichi trade is fueled by expectations that the prime minister’s economic policies will boost equities, while weakening the yen<\/a> as she prefers a looser monetary policy and higher government spending.<\/p>\n Indeed, Japanese stocks hit a record<\/a> high on Monday, and extended gains on Tuesday<\/a>. “The strong LDP win is warming the hearts of investors,” said Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC.<\/p>\n U.S. markets also closed higher overnight. Big Tech stocks mostly rebounded<\/a>, with Oracle<\/a> jumping 9.6% and Microsoft<\/a> advancing 3.1%. That helped the S&P 500<\/a> climb 0.47% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite<\/a> jump 0.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a> ticked up 0.04% \u2014 but that still lifted it to another record close.<\/p>\n Heavy capex and financing concerns still swirl around Big Tech, however. Alphabet<\/a> warned in its annual financial report<\/a> last week that it could be left with “excess capacity” of data centers in a less-than-ideal scenario.<\/p>\n That said, the Google-parent is still planning to raise $20 billion<\/a> from a U.S. dollar bond sale \u2014 with one bond having a 100-year tenor and denominated in sterling \u2014 according to people familiar with the matter, who asked to remain unnamed because the details are confidential.<\/p>\n In other tech news, ChatGPT is “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth,” according to CEO Sam Altman’s memo to employees<\/a>. If the broader industry can enjoy such expansion over the long term, Alphabet is unlikely to face any “excess capacity” issues.<\/p>\n \u2014 CNBC’s Lim Hui Jie and Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.<\/p>\n What you need to know todayAnd finally…<\/p>\n