Investors wary of US gains

MOTOR giant Toyota was the fastest mover in

While Nasdaq's overnight rise of 3.23% in anticipation of good results today from semiconductor equipment manufacturer Applied Materials generated some modest buying of technology stocks in Tokyo, the effect on the Nikkei 225 was limited to a 21.64-point rise to 11,358.59. Most of that was due to a 1.5% gain by Toyota following record earnings last year and plans to buy back 4.7% of its outstanding stock.

Action among heavyweight blue-chips was subdued ahead of the annual results due today from Nippon Telegraph & Telephone. The stock fell 1.4% as traders braced themselves for record losses on heavy reorganisation costs.

A massive bail-out of ailing building contractor Daikyu sent bank shares into a swoon as investors fretted about the continued lack of resolve by the financial sector to take hard decisions. UJF Holdings, one of Japan's big three lenders, fell almost 4% after a consortium of banks forgave Daikyu debts worth 470bn yen (£2.5bn).

While investors in Tokyo await the expected downgrading of the country's credit rating, Hong Kong was given a slap on the back by Moody's Investors Services. Weeks ahead of the fifth anniversary of the return of sovereignty to China, Moody's reported that the territory's continued autonomy from Beijing had earned it a positive outlook.

Welcome as the accolade may have been, it was an upward re-rating of HSBC Holdings that generated a modest rise of 7.56 points to 11,740.99 in the Hang Seng index. The bank's stock rose HK$1.25 to HK$97.50 after Goldman Sachs rated the group a market outperformer, on expectations that a global recovery will benefit HSBC's Asian operations.

Signs of a revival in the prices of D-Ram chips boosted technology stocks in a recently lacklustre South Korean market, where the Kospi index put on 12.09 to 833.98. Shares of Samsung Electronics, which have lost almost 25% of their value in a month, rallied nearly 5%.

Stronger Taiwanese semiconductor stocks were balanced by falls among local airlines after talks with Hong Kong over future landing rights stalled. The Composite index rose

Trading in Sydney was subdued before the annual budget, but a 1% recovery in News Corp shares, ahead of annual results, helped lift the All Ordinaries 10.8 to 3263. Recently friendless telecoms operator Telstra attracted buyers' attention after Nasdaq's overnight gains and rallied more than 1%.

Broad but fairly modest rises across the board in Singapore took the Straits Times index up 6.30 to 1739.09. Computer-related stocks, headed by chipmaker Chartered Semiconductor, were lifted by the overnight performances in the US. Other South-East Asian markets continued to drift, with Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur Composite down 1.43 points to 784.60, the Composite index in Jakarta off 1.35 to 535.80, and Thailand's SET index barely changed, up 0.13 at 380.80.

Prices and indices in this section are supplied from various sources and calculated at different times and may not always match those listed in the tables.