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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paul ross who wrote (575)	2/2/1999 11:14:00 PM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 49022

Japan 1990 = US 1999 / US 1990 = Japan 1999 accept it.

To: paul ross who wrote (575)	2/5/1999 8:32:00 AM
From: Worswick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49022

Hi... (C) Reuters/Yahoo Friday February 5, 5:40 am Eastern Time Japanese beginning to shift assets home--sources By Chikafumi Hodo TOKYO, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Japanese investors are steadily selling off foreign assets and bringing their money home, tempted back by sharply rising domestic bond yields and year-end book closings, market sources said on Friday. They said some Japanese banks had been seen unloading foreign bonds and reconverting their funds to yen, particularly since October when the dollar tumbled against the yen as hedge funds unwound speculative currency and interest rate plays. ''It is not wrong to say banks have been repatriating their overseas bond assets...and such sales could increase, not only by banks but more widely among Japanese investors, given domestic market conditions,'' a senior Japanese banker said. ''In fact, we have recently detected aggressive selling by some major Japanese banks,'' the banker said. ''I think fund repatriation will become more notable in the coming months, especially ahead of the fiscal year-end.'' The dollar and Treasury prices came under pressure on Thursday when rumours circulated in New York that Japan's Finance Ministry had been selling U.S. Treasury bonds and urging Japanese investors to do the same before their financial year-end book closings on March 31. Although a ministry official in New York denied the rumour on Thursday, speculation of an exodus of Japanese funds has been casting a shadow over the dollar/yen rate in recent weeks, currency dealers said. According to a monthly survey by the Ministry of Finance (MOF), net purchases of foreign bonds by Japanese investors, based on contracts, totalled 5.83 trillion yen between August and December of last year. Japanese banks, however, were net sellers of foreign bonds during that period to the tune of 249.5 billion yen. That was a time of marked dollar weakness, triggered in October when hedge funds began unwinding massive positions due to the crisis in Russia and the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund. Many investors who had steadily built up foreign bond holdings before the dollar's dive were believed to have suffered heavy currency losses. ''Smaller and mid-sized life insurers have been detected selling consistently, possibly to make up for those currency losses before (they close their books at) the end of March,'' a foreign bank dealer said. ''Major insurers have been sidelined so far and we expect to see more such sales by smaller insurance firms,'' he said. This repatriation of funds from overseas has been spurred in part by recent rises in Japanese government bond (JGB) yields, which narrowed the interest rate differential that had made foreign assets relatively attractive, bond and currency dealers said. Financial markets will be closely watching the Finance Ministry's survey for January, scheduled for release next Wednesday, to see whether Japanese fund repatriation has gathered steam, market sources said.