Japan's finance minister said on Friday the government aims to steer the country's vast state pension funds to "substantially" lift investments in domestic assets, sparking gains in the yen and bonds as investors bet billions of dollars could be channelled into Japanese markets. The comments put the spotlight on the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world's largest pension fund, which managed 293.6 trillion yen ($1.8 trillion) in assets at the end of March. Any shift in its portfolio strategy would reverberate across global financial markets. "We would like to pursue measures that would encourage ... (full story)