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CNN Live At Daybreak

Pension Funds Active in Japan

Aired July 23, 2002 - 05:42   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: We have checked on the markets in Europe, we're going to now check on what's happening in the Asian markets.

CNN's Andrew Stevens is in Hong Kong. He joins us live with the details -- Andrew.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, thanks very much.

Well I think you can officially say, certainly from this part of the world anyway, that it's not the end of the world as far as the investment community is concerned. We saw a pretty good rally in Asia, all things considered. All the markets, which were down yesterday, and that was most of them, again they weren't down as much as the U.S. markets had been. They were still down yesterday. They're all back and beyond the losses they made on Monday so there's pretty good news all around.

I just want to quickly talk about Tokyo, obviously the biggest market here in Asia by the country mile, and that was up again today for the second time in a row. Actually, Tokyo's looking pretty good. The reasons there pretty much the fact that the Nikkei has come down a long, long way. It had been off about 15 percent leading up to the start of this week, so a bit of buying there.

Also, the pension funds. The big pension funds in Japan were active. And this is raising some questions perhaps that the Japanese government is leaning on the pension fund managers to get in there and sort of help stabilize the markets. That hasn't been confirmed but certainly one worth watching. But even if you take that out, there's still a lot of investors saying there's some bargains in Tokyo, in rest of Asia at the moment -- Anderson.

COOPER: What value have the Asian markets lost in the last couple of weeks, and we've lost tremendous value here in the United States?

STEVENS: Yes, nothing like what we've seen in the U.S., probably 10, 20 percent over the past three, four weeks in most of the markets. But you've got to remember the Asian markets haven't had that sort of massive run-up that we saw. I mean that huge bubble, as we all know it, is now in the U.S., particularly in the techs, didn't really happen to any same degree here. Now as I was saying yesterday, Anderson, we had the Asian crisis came five years ago and that sorted a lot of things out there. Accounting practices were put in some sort of shape and people became just a lot warier of what was going on in Asia. So that was -- that was -- that was sort of penned into the value of the stock, so we haven't had that huge run-up to have the big falloff.

COOPER: All right. Andrew, thanks very much for joining us this morning. Appreciate it.

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