Japan

Aug 27, 2005

Tokyo stocks rally

TOKYO - Individuals are joining foreign investors in driving up stocks, with the market seeing inflows of funds from retail investors, especially those who actively trade shares via the Internet.

Individual investors' share of stock trading on the nation's three major stock exchanges stood at 37.4% in July, the most elevated level since February 1987. It remains high in August.

On Wednesday, the value of trading on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange clocked in at about 1.97 trillion yen (US$17.9 billion). While the number of shares changing hands totaled slightly below 1.7 billion that day, there have already been 12 trading days so far this year when trading volume exceeded 2 billion shares, compared with 11 days for all of 2004.

The Nikkei Stock Average ended 29.33 points higher at 12,502.26 Wednesday.

Shares of major banks came under selling in the morning

session, but they rebounded in afternoon trading and ended logging a new record high for the year driven by buying from individual investors.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc ranked first and second in terms of trading value at four online brokers including Matsui Securities Co, whose customer base is mainly individual investors. According to a Nomura Securities Co official, since August "there has been a flurry of inquiries and orders concerning blue chips such as large banks and Toyota Motor Corp" from individual investors.

(Asia Pulse/Nikkei)

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