05-14-04 Auszug:
China's market turned down after a higher-than-expected rise in April's consumer price index sparked concerns that more credit-tightening measures could be on the way. Shares retreated across the board, but blue-chip petrochemical companies fell particularly steeply in heavy trading.
The market was also pressured by a joint notice issued by China's central bank, banking regulator and industry policy-making bureau announcing curbs in lending to some projects in certain sectors, to avoid "blind" investment.
China's consumer prices rose 3.8% in April, the sharpest annual increase in seven years. That inflation rate was higher than market expectations, which centered on a 3.2% rise after a 3% expansion in March.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 Stock Average ended slightly higher as the dollar's rise helped boost select exporter companies, but the broader Tokyo stock market ended down on continued investor jitters over monetary tightening in the U.S. and China.
The Nikkei 225 rose 0.23% 10849.63 points after Thursday's nearly 3% fall. For the week, the Nikkei lost 5.15%. But the Topix index of all the Tokyo Stock Exchange First Section issues fell 0.4% to 1091.51 points.
Record high oil prices, a possible interest rate rise in the U.S., Japan's biggest trade partner, and Thursday's weak machinery orders data at home are casting a shadow over Japan's recovery and weighing on the Tokyo market.
Major banks fell in Japan, with the country's biggest, Mizuho Financial Group, dipping 4.41%.
Mazda Motor said net income for fiscal 2004 jumped 41%, powered by robust sales in Europe and the yen's weakness against the euro. The Japanese auto maker, in which Ford Motor Co. has a 33% stake, said cost cuts also helped improve results. But it forecast that a stronger yen ahead will keep earnings flat this fiscal year. Mazda shares fell 4.66%.
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone shares rose 1.9% after the company reported that net profit more than doubled in the latest fiscal year, helped by strong results at its NTT DoCoMo mobile-phone arm, as well as gains in its fixed-line communications business.
Also in Japan, it was reported that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi failed to pay premiums into Japan's troubled pension system, implicating him in a damaging scandal that has already forced his own top lieutenant and the No. 1 opposition leader to resign.
--------------------------------
May 03, Auszug:
"You've got daily commentary on the prospects of US interest rates changing, then you've got the comments from the official authorities in China into the melting pot. It creates a volatile scenario. But when you stand back and think about these thing in the longer term, the drivers [for Chinese growth] are still in place."
--------------------------------------------
May 15: China's economic expansion will be slowed to between 7 percent and 8 percent this year from over 9 percent last year, S&P said. As a result, Lehman lowered its projection for Taiwan's economy for this year to 5.5 percent from its previous 6 percent forecast.
China is doing all it can to prevent its economy from overheating, Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said in Jeju, South Korea. ``The Chinese have a good grasp of the current situation, and have implemented various policies, so we can expect them to overcome this situation of the economy overheating,'' he told reporters.
Companies including Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and South Korean steelmaker Posco are increasingly reliant on China for sales growth. They are counting on China to succeed in its bid to cool its economy to growth of about 7 percent this year from 9.1 percent last year without causing a sharper slowdown.
China yesterday said its inflation rate rose to a seven-year high of 3.8 percent in April, prompting the government to widen restrictions on investment to rein in price increases.
China's industrial output increased by 19.1 percent year-on-year in April, according to statistics released by the National Statistics Bureau (NBS) on Thursday.
The growth rate was basically the same as that of March, the NBS said.
The industrial output in the first four months rose to 1.57 trillion yuan, up 18.2 percent year-on-year, NBS statistics show.
The heavy industries registered a faster growth rate than light industries in April. They reported a yearly increase of 21.4 percent and 16.6 percent respectively.
Energy, raw materials and consumer goods still maintained a relatively high growth rate in April. Coal production was up 18.6 percent, electricity output 16.2 percent, cement 16.8 percent, and rolled steel 23.4 percent.
The production of notebook computers rose by 100.8 percent year-on-year, mobile phones 65.6 percent, and autos 34.6 percent, with sedans up 42.6 percent.
In the period, the export of China's industrial products kept increasing at a speed of 32.7 percent, 3.9 percentage points higher than that of the same period last year, said NBS.
-------------------------------
Die Stimmung werde weiter getrübt durch die Erwartung einer baldigen Leitzins-Erhöhung in den USA und die anhaltend hohen Ölpreise, sagten Händler.
"Die Investoren sind nervös, was die US-Zinsen betrifft, wann und um wieviel die Fed erhöhen wird ... und die hohen Ölpreise machen das Rätselraten noch schwieriger", sagte Yasuo Ueki von Poko Financial.
If oil prices stay at current high levels in June and onwards and the dollar/yen rate is around current levels, that would drag down recurring profits at all industries by 2.3 percent in the year to next March, the report said.
Technical charts show that the Nikkei is firmly supported by its 200-day moving average, which often suggests a long-term trend and now stands at 10,720.
---------------------------------
Tuesday May 11
Industrialized countries are well into a robust and sustainable economic recovery, powered by the United States, China and Japan, but the rebound is bypassing the eurozone where a cut in interest rates may now be in order, the OECD said.
"Asia remains bouyant, with China close to overheating and Japan enjoying a much stronger and broader recovery than expected."But at the same time, according to Cotis, there was a danger that the global pick-up could remain "even more polarized than expected," largely because eurozone growth continues to trail that of the United States and Asia.Cotis later told a news conference that given stable inflation in the eurozone, "there may be a case for a further cut in short-term (eurozone) interest rates, unless of course the recent rise in oil prices degenerates into a fully-fledged shock -- but we are far from that now."
Cotis maintained that recent reaction to a spike in oil prices had been exaggerated.
But what is critically needed, according to the report, is for eurozone heavyweights to take seriously their obligation -- as mandated by the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact -- to control public spending.
The study sees Japan enjoying its "first sustained, if somewhat irregular, recovery since the 1980s," fuelled largely by double-digit export growth. As a result growth in Japanese growth should average 2.5 percent in 2005-2005 rather than the 1.8 percent forecast last November.
Expansion outside the OECD area should be sustained by China, where momentum is seen slowing to eight percent, Russia, which should see seven percent growth this year and Latin America, where output in Brazil will likely recover to 3.5 percent by next year.
--------------------------------------------
07.05.2004
Einflussfaktor China darf nicht vergessen werden
In seinem jüngsten Kommentar geht John Hatherly, Chefökonom und Leiter der Global Analysis bei der britischen Fondsgesellschaft M&G International, auf die momentane Situation am japanischen Aktienmarkt ein. Der weltweit herrschende Optimismus der Anleger für den Nippon-Markt kann der M&G Experte verstehen. Auch wenn der Anstieg des Nikkei-Index von nahezu 60 % in seinen Augen nicht viel positiver zu bewerten ist als ähnliche (letztlich kurzlebige) Rallies in den 1990er Jahren, waren diese weder von entscheidend besseren Aussichten für das Wirtschaftswachstum noch von offensichtlichen Lösungen zu tiefgreifenden Strukturproblemen begleitet, wie sie heute erkennbar sind.
Hatherly warnt in seinem Statement aber auch vor zu großer Euphorie. Denn auch wenn der 14-jährige Bärenmarkt in der Tat vorbei ist, sollten Anleger die Ereignisse in China nicht außer Acht lassen, denn schließlich ist Chinas dynamische Expansion der Auslöser für Japans wirtschaftliche Renaissance. In diesem Zusammenhang weist Hatherly auf die nun häufiger zu vernehmenden Aussagen chinesischer Behörden hin, dass Schritte unternommen werden müssen, um das explosionsartige Wachstum einzudämmen. Allein die Aussicht darauf wirkte sich bereits negativ auf die Bergbauaktien aus, Japan blieb von dieser Stimmung bisher verschont. Für den erfahrenen Volkswirten aber selbst die ausdauerndsten Optimisten jedoch mit erheblichen Kursschwankungen auf dem japanischen Aktienmarkt zu rechnen, wenn China die geldpolitische Schraube weiterhin anzieht.
-----------------------------------
May 11, 2004
"China was a major driver of Japanese growth last year," said Garry Evans, Asian strategist at HSBC, in a recent research report. And if China's boom ends this year as Evans expects, "it is unavoidable that the Japanese economy, and corporate earnings in particular, will be negatively affected."
Of course, a hard landing in China would reverberate far beyond Japan's shores and would rattle markets everywhere.
China's economy grew 9.1 percent in 2003, and at an annualized rate of 9.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, but virtually no one thinks the country can maintain that pace. The Asian Development Bank expects Chinese growth to slow to 8.3 percent this year, as the government takes steps to cool down the rapidly expanding economy.
Indeed, some of the heat from China's growth last year warmed up Japan, too. Japan's total exports increased by 2.4 trillion yen last year, and 79 percent of that represented increased exports to China, according to Evans.
The impact was greatest in Japan's electrical machinery sector. China also accounted for significant portions of the export growth in the electrical-machinery and auto sectors.
"Exports, are, of course, only half the story," said Evans. "Increasingly, companies have been shifting production to China, not just to export to the U.S. and other developed economies, but also to satisfy Chinese domestic demand."
Precision-equipment companies generate 38 percent of the overseas subsidiaries' sales from China, and both textiles and the figures for machinery companies are more than 20 percent, according to Evans.
Overall manufacturing in China recorded 32 percent sales growth in the fourth quarter in dollar terms, while sales at subsidiaries in the rest of the world grew by nearly 13 percent. Machinery, electrical machinery, precision equipment, autos and non-ferrous metals all had more than 25 percent sales growth.
China, though, is heading down the path that led Japan into trouble.
Bank lending has funded much of China's rapid economic expansion of the past few years -- in 2003 alone, bank credits accounted for 85 percent of all funds raised.
Foreign direct investment inflows and a propensity to save led to a continued build-up of bank deposits, putting pressure on financial institutions to keep lending. At the same time, the government's steps to slow loan growth may have a mixed outcome and end up hurting some banks' asset quality, said Wei Yen, senior credit officer at Moody's Investors Service in report released Friday.
Some private economists argue the risks for Japan's economy aren't as great.
"China's industrial growth needs to slow into single digits in order to cause a problem for Japan," said ING economist Richard Jerram in a report this month. "With Chinese industrial production currently running at over 16 percent and slowing only very gradually, there does not seem to be a significant risk."
Jerram expects Japan's rising exports to Taiwan and South Korea to pick up some of the slack as export growth to China slows.
And Japanese companies themselves apparently remain hopeful.
----------------------------------
Nikkei, 10-Tageschart:
10.05.2004, Andere Quelle:
Sollte auch an der (Unterstützungs-) Haltemarke bei 10.869 Punkten die notwendige Stabilisierung ausbleiben, müsse mit einem in Richtung der nachgeschalteten (leichten) Unterstützung bei 10.486 Punkten orientierenden Index gerechnet werden.
Somit könnte eine eventuelle kurzfristige Gegenbewegung bereits beim Widerstand bei 11.160 Punkten zum Erliegen kommen. Die Voraussetzung für weiteres Erholungspotenzial zum Widerstand bei 11.643 Punkten und damit ein Rücklauf in den Aufwärtstrend wäre ein Abbau des negativen Überhangs an Abwärtspotenzial und -dynamik.
Von diesem Szenario sei der Nikkei Index allerdings weit entfernt. Der Index könnte vielmehr nach der Auflösung des Aufwärtstrend-Szenarios vor der Ausbildung eines mittelfristigen Abwärtstrends stehen. In diesem Fall werde der Hochpunkt einer wahrscheinlichen (Aufwärts-) Gegenbewegung den ersten Konstruktionspunkt für die vorläufigen Abwärtstrendlinie darstellen. Sollte die Unterstützungsmarke bei 10.486 Punkten keinen Halt bieten, sei sogar eine Orientierung zur nächsten Unterstützung möglich.
----------------------------------------
im Bereich von 114,82 bis 115,80 JPY eine massive Widerstandszone
------------------------------------------------
Bitte schaut Euch doch einmal das letzte Posting auf der vorherigen Seite und das obige einmal an und schreibt hier einmal, was Ihre erwartet für die nächsten Tage und Wochen bei Euro-Yen. Habe Shorts und frage mich, ob ich die Dinger weiter halten oder sofort verkaufen soll.