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Strategies & Market Trends : JAPAN-Nikkei-Time to go back up? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chirodoc who wrote (1813)	3/26/1999 1:48:00 AM
From: borb	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3902

POLL-Japan investors shift to stocks from bonds By Akiko Ishiwata TOKYO, March 26 (Reuters) - Japanese institutional investors plan to shift towards stocks over bonds in April, with equities outweighing debt for the first time in nine months, a Reuters poll showed on Friday. ''Worries about global deflation are receding, so we're lowering our weightings of bonds and increasing our weightings of stocks and cash,'' said an official at Tokyo Securities. Geographically, the investors said they planned slightly lower weightings in U.S. Treasury securities, which would be overtaken taken by their total weightings for European government bonds. Investment in Japanese and U.S. stocks was seen rising at the expense of European shares in the monthly survey of 13 institutional investors, who responded by Tuesday. ''In an atmosphere of increasing speculation of a U.S. credit tightening, it's getting a bit difficult to expect capital gains on foreign bonds,'' said a Nomura Securities official. ''In addition it's hard to gauge currency risk as it's unclear which direction dollar/yen is going. So Japanese stocks are emerging as an investment target.'' The 11 institutions that discussed their global asset allocations reported share weightings rising 3.74 percentage points from a month earlier to an average 46.45 percent. Stocks overtook bonds, which declined 2.36 points to 40.91 percent, for the first time since the survey conducted in July. Cash weightings dipped 1.37 points to an average 12.65 percent. Seven institutions raised their global share weightings and four held them steady. Five cut their bond weightings and six stood pat. Eight kept their cash weightings unchanged, one increased cash and two reduced. All 13 firms responded on their stock portfolios, with U.S. and Canadian share weightings rising 0.9 point to 44.15 percent, European stocks falling 2.41 points to 33.41 percent and Japanese shares rising 1.58 point to 20.54 percent. For the nine firms responding on government bond investments, European weightings increased 0.89 point to an average 45.89 percent, edging ahead of U.S. and Canadian government securities, which fell 0.61 point to 44.56 percent. Japanese government bond weightings dipped 0.28 point to 9.44 percent. On the outlook for dollar/yen trading and Tokyo shares, 10 firms responded. They gave an average range for the dollar of 113.50-125.65 yen, within an overall forecast range of 110-130 yen. The average Nikkei Stock Average forecast was 14,840-17,040, within an overall range of 14,000-18,000. The dollar was around 118 yen and the Nikkei near 16,000 on Friday morning.