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Rally on Wall Street helps Nikkei to climb |
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August 8, 2000
TOKYO (AP) - Tokyo stocks climbed Monday morning, supported by Friday's rally on Wall Street. The U.S. dollar edged higher against the yen. The benchmark 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average gained 156.53 points, or 1.00 percent, to 15,823.89 points at the end of the morning session. On Friday, the average closed down 147.08 points, or 0.93 percent. The dollar bought 108.72 yen in late morning, up 0.32 yen from late Friday in Tokyo and also above its late New York level of 108.52 yen on Friday. On the stock market, the investors were cheered up by a 61.17-point gain in the Dow Jones industrial average on Friday that pushed the index to 10,767.75. Among morning gainers were technology issues, including Sony and TDK, and nonferrous metals and pharmaceutical issues. The broader Tokyo Stock Price Index of all issues listed on the first section rose 13.22 points, or 0.91 percent, to 1,464.10 points. The TOPIX closed down 9.59 points, or 0.66 percent, on Friday. Also in New York, the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 27.48 points to close at 3,787.36 on Friday. In currency dealings, the dollar rose on investor confidence that the brisk U.S. economy may make a so-called "soft landing," a slowdown in growth and inflation that doesn't trigger a recession. On Friday, the Labor Department said the U.S. unemployment rate held at 4 percent in July, a sign that the U.S. economic growth was cooling off as a result of the high-interest-rate policy engineered by the Federal Reserve Board over the past year. The Fed has raised interest rates six times since last summer in hopes of preventing the economy from overheating. On Aug. 22, Fed policy-makers will decide whether another rate increase is needed. Trades, however, stayed in a narrow range as players await a policy-board meeting of the Bank of Japan on Friday to see whether there will be any change in the central bank's current interest rate policy. Japan's central bank has maintained a near zero-interest rate policy to spur the nation's economy out of its worst slowdown since World War II. In other currencies, the euro was traded at 98.74 yen, up from 97.86 yen late Friday in Tokyo. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond fell to 1.6700 percent from Friday's finish of 1.6750 percent. Its price rose 0.04 point to 100.25. (km-dj) On the Net: Japan's Tokyo Stock Exchange: http://www.tse.or.jp
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