A Tokyo-headquartered SoftBank Group, which specializes in multinational investment management, is ready to become one more corporation to confirm the market's faith that re-elected U.S. president Donald Trump actually has a gift of turning anything he touches to gold, like the Greek myth character, king Midas. This time, Donald Trump and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, one of the early believers in the great power of the World Wide Web who poured billions of dollars into promising start-ups of Silicon Valley including a valuable chipmaker Arm Holdings, have made a joint statement. They appeared together on Monday at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and said that SoftBank is going to invest nearly $100 billion over the next four years in what would be a solid boost to the American economy. This means the total sum will be deployed in sync with Trump's second term.

This was enough for Softbank shares to quickly add 4.42% in the Japanese trading session on Tuesday morning. However, that should just be the beginning of a bigger rally, as it echoed a pledge, which the Softbank's founder already made with then-President-elect Trump in December 2016, when Masayoshi Son said he would spend $50 billion to create 50,000 jobs. Shares of Softbank were quoted below 4,000 JPY at that moment, then climbed above 6,000 JPY in nearly two years. It finally peaked at 10,695 JPY in March 2021 and then reset this record to briefly hit above 12,000 JPY in July 2024. The current market price is only about 9,850 JPY, leaving a lot of space for potential growth again.

According to Trump, the investment co-operation would help to create 100,000 more U.S. jobs at a minimum, as Masayoshi Son "feels very optimistic about our country since the election". The investment "will help insure that artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and other industries of tomorrow are built, created right here in the U.S.A.," Trump added, while Masayoshi Son noted that his confidence level to the economy of the United States "has tremendously increased" with Trump's victory. During their joint announcement, by the way, Trump even asked Son to double the proposed sum. "I'm going to ask him right now, will you make it $200 billion, believe it or not, he can actually afford to do that," Trump said after calling Son "one of the most accomplished business leaders of our time". Thus, Son responded that "with your leadership and my partnership and your support" he will "try to make it happen". Last week, Trump proclaimed that he would extend "fast-track permitting" to any company, which invests $1 billion or more into the US economy.

Softbank reportedly has been rebuilding its finances after the failure of an office-sharing startup WeWork and after some other tech firms Softbank invested in just fell out of favour among the crowd of traders. This is probably the reason for a partial discount for Softbank shares after reaching a new all-time high this summer. This looks as an advantage for picking up the stock, even though this also could be a source of some worries for new investors. Again, Donald Trump likes loud announcements promising thousands of jobs, even though such investments do not always pan out. A $10 billion investment by FoxConn into a Wisconsin factory that initially supposed thousands of jobs was later mostly abandoned, as an example. Yet, the crowd's enthusiasm can outbalance old grounds for doubts as the investment community has seemingly started to heat up, so that even the initial mood could be enough for retesting levels above 12,000 JPY of six months ago. After the recent triumph of Tesla, which added more than 70% to its value in the post-election effect, at least a 15% or 20% increase for Trump's Japanese business partner and admirer seems to be quite reasonable.