The following prediction appears more conservative. However, a 5%+ gain seems to be minimum for year 2000.
TOKYO, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Japan's high-technology shares are expected to power the market higher in 2000, helping the Nikkei average recover to pre-crisis levels of around 20,000 during the year.
All the major indices saw strong gains in 1999, with the benchmark Nikkei rising 36.79 percent to end at 18,934.34 on Thursday, the last trading day of the year before the market reopens on Tuesday, January 4.
Strategists said they expect it to recover to 20,000 in the next couple of months, and possibly finish the year at around 21,000.
But as buying concentrates in large capitalisation, high-tech stocks, traders said the TOPIX , a capital-weighted index of all first-section shares will become a better benchmark for grasping market trends than the Nikkei.
"The Nikkei doesn't tell you that a selected number of large, high-tech issues are doing well while the rest aren't," said Masakazu Kimura, an equities manager at Universal Securities.
TOPIX closed at 1,722.20, up 58.44 percent from last year.
But the over-the-market (OTC) market saw the strongest gains due to its high percentage of high-tech issues, with the Nikkei OTC index up 213 percent year-on-year to end at 2,270.14. |
