# BOJ’s New ETF Sales Pace Would Take 43 Years to Clear Holdings

By Enna Lee

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/investing/44988
Published: 2026-10-30T18:16:01.000Z
Updated: 2026-10-30T18:16:01.000Z
Section: Investing

> The ¥860 billion annual pace begins in January 2027 and is estimated at about 0.1% of trading value.

The Bank of Japan, Japan’s central bank, will raise annual exchange-traded fund sales to about ¥860 billion at book value in January 2027, a pace that implies about 43 years to sell its holdings.

The new pace is about 2.6 times the previous rate of about ¥330 billion a year at book value. The BOJ approved the change unanimously and announced it at 11:02 p.m. ET Thursday, Oct. 29 (03:02 UTC Friday, Oct. 30).

The annual book-value sales pace corresponds to about ¥2.46 trillion at market value, or about 0.1% of trading value. The market-value conversion applies the market-to-book ratio of ETFs sold from January through September 2026; the trading-value estimate uses activity in the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market over that period.

Using holdings at the end of September 2026, the run-rate calculation puts the time needed to sell them at about 43 years, compared with 112 years under the previous pace. That is an estimate based on the current holdings and sales rate, not a scheduled completion date. A separate estimate puts the previous plan at 0.05% of trading value, but the two estimates use different reference periods and are not a like-for-like measure of market impact.

The BOJ began selling ETFs in January 2026. Sales have proceeded smoothly without a major market impact as stock trading expanded. The trustee may temporarily adjust the pace or suspend sales as financial-market conditions change.

The BOJ launched ETF purchases in 2010; most came during the monetary easing program that began in 2013. It also kept annual sales of Japanese real estate investment trusts at about ¥5 billion at book value. The uncollateralized overnight call-rate guideline remained around 1.25% in an 8-1 vote, alongside the ETF sales plan.

A Bitcoin connection is indirect because the decision concerns Japanese stock funds. During market turbulence in August 2024, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) fell as much as 20%. Those losses suggested some retail traders may have faced margin calls and may have been forced to close positions in seemingly unrelated assets. That episode does not establish an effect from the BOJ’s planned ETF sales.

The higher annual sales pace is scheduled to start in January 2027.