Financial Orbit wrap 20/10/14

Five sentences or graphics which sum up the Financial Orbit output over the last 24 hours across the website, twitter account and anything else thought about...

1. Potentially interesting news from Japan on the country's core pension fund allocation...potentially accentuating the fall of the yen: 

'Japan’s $1.2 trillion retirement fund will increase its allocation target for shares to about 25 percent from 12 percent, the Nikkei newspaper reported without attribution.

The Government Pension Investment Fund will also boost its holdings of foreign bonds and stocks to about a combined 30 percent from 23 percent, while reducing domestic notes to the 40 percent level from 60 percent, the Nikkei reported on Oct. 18'

2. Staying indirectly with Japan...good demographic chart from today's Financial Times.  Look at the differences in the graph curves. for different regions.  

3. For my latest Yahoo Finance Contributors article I muse on this chart...

4. ...and this one too:

5. Corporate results today were a bit of a mixed bag...not so great from IBM, SAP and Philips.  Better from some other European names.  Many, many more to come this week...