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To: Slumdog who wrote (48491)	4/1/1999 2:55:00 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 164684

D Taylor -- Japan -- very impressive -- see below. Started flat and then took off. The NAS futures went from negative 700 to positive 300 in that time. But notice also that the yen is strengthening. Lets see what happens on the interest rate front next. There is a lot of uncertainty here about what happens next. Thursday April 1, 2:12 am Eastern Time Nikkei up as new fiscal year draws local investors By Hiroko Nakata TOKYO, April 1 (Reuters) - Tokyo's key Nikkei average closed sharply higher on Thursday as the opening day of the 1999/2000 business year gave a cue for cash-rich domestic investors to get in on the bull run in Japanese stocks, traders said. Overseas investors, who have been the driving force in the latest rally, continued to hunt for Tokyo stocks on prospects that Japanese firms will conduct further downsizing to improve profitability. The benchmark Nikkei 225 average finished 3.10 percent or 490.97 points higher at 16,327.56. It briefly surged as high as 16,449.97, the highest intra-day level since July 22, 1998. June Nikkei futures closed 580 points higher at 16,330. ''Corporate investors are awash with fresh money after the book-closings on March 31,'' said Kiyoshi Kimura, a strategist at Societe Generale Securities Ltd. ''Foreign investors, who enjoyed a good performance of Japanese stocks in the first quarter (of this calendar year), also can't keep underweighting,'' he said. Traders said the investor buying lifted shares in global blue-chip companies such as Honda Motor Co , Toyota Motor Corp , Toshiba Corp and Sharp Corp . Honda shares briefly hit 5,640, their highest price ever, as domestic and foreign investors hunted for the core Japanese blue chip to increase the weighting of Japanese stocks in their portfolios, traders said. Honda closed 190 yen or 3.55 percent higher at 5,540. Masatoshi Sato, a manager at Kankaku Securities Co Ltd, said: ''Demestic pension funds, which have delayed riding on the recent rally, appeared to snap up shares with higher aggregated market value to increase their weighting of Japanese stocks.'' Sato said the issues included Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd , up 210 yen or 4.58 percent at 4,800, and Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co Ltd up 250 yen or 6.67 percent at 4,000. Trading volume swelled to 725.98 million shares on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, from 480.42 million shares on Wednesday. Broader indices all moved higher. The TOPIX index of all first-section shares rose 33.22 points or 2.62 percent to 1,300.44. The Nikkei 300 jumped 7.74 points or 3.05 percent to 261.62. Advancers outpaced decliners 764 to 441, with 110 issues unchanged. Analysts expected buying by overseas investors, which triggered a rally last month, to continue in this financial year. ''Foreign investors are likely to have placed net buying orders of about two trillion yen in March and this would be their heaviest monthly buying ever,'' said Societe's Kimura. ''I wouldn't be surprised if foreigners' net buying reached 10 trillion yen for this financial year,'' he said. Elsewhere in the market, companies announcing restructuring plans generally rose. Mitsubishi Electric Corp , a major engineering and electronics company, was up 39 yen or 9.85 percent at 435, as investors responded positively to its announcement on Wednesday of a three-year restructuring plan. The company topped the list of most actively traded issues on the TSE's first section. But department store operator Sogo Co Ltd was down 18 yen or 8.57 percent at 192 after lowering its 1998/99 earnings forecast. It now expects a parent net loss of 25.7 billion yen compared with a previous forecast of a 300 million yen profit.