Nikkei Up 250+, Now Over 15,100 -- ADRs to Watch: ATE, KUB, MLEA, MTU, CAJ, NEC, HIT, SANYY, ETF: EWJ

In very upbeat trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Nikkei 225 finished the afternoon on a torrid upward climb easily eclipsing the 15,000 level and giving it some breathing room against profit taking. The TOPIX and JASDAQ also made nice gains on the day. The yen is now into the lower Y120/US$1 range. I am noticing a different mix of stocks leading rallies and those primarily being domestic oriented, domestic demand stocks. This is another excellent indication in my opinion of the resurging economy and proof that non-auto and non-exporter stocks can also drive the exchange and indices higher.

Advantest (ticker: ATE) led all Tokyo traded shares of ADRs gaining 5.50% on the day. It has been an extremely volatile stock either leading the pack on the upside or downside depending on the mood, rally or profit-taking. There were only 6 stocks that traded higher than Advantest today and they included two pharmaceutical companies, Sumitomo Osaka Cement Co, Softbank, Dowa Mining Co, and The Japan Steel Works Ltd.

Nikkei 225: +258.35 (+1.74%) closed at 15,130.50, opened 30+ points higher from prior close of 14,872.15, intra-day high was at closing, intra-day low of 14,880.18, today's closing is another 5-year high going back to December 2000

TOPIX: +23.60 (+1.54%) closed at 1,559.81, opened nearly 5 points higher than prior close of 1,536.21, intra-day high was at closing, low was 1,538.99

JASDAQ: +0.86 (+0.77%) closed at 112.47, traded as high as 112.49, lowest point of the day was 111.63

Although the yen is now trading in the lower Y120/US$1 range I don't think we'll see it weaken to Y122 and have a hard time imagining Y125+. Going forward to April 1st, the start of the next fiscal, I think the dollar remains strong against the yen. However, I anticipate the Bank of Japan will begin to end its easy monetary policy from April and we'll then see the yen gain some ground back on the dollar. U.S. investors in Japanese stocks would stand to make currency gains in the 2nd half of 2006 if this is the case. As it stands now, the U.S. investor is missing out on some of the action because of the strength of the dollar which is eating away at gains.

Today's Tokyo Stock Exchange traded shares of ADRs movers:
* Advancers: Advantest (ATE) +5.50%, Kubota (KUB) +3.32%, Millea Holdings (MLEA) +3.03%, Mitsubishi UFJ Fin Grp (MTU) +2.65%, Canon (CAJ) +2.24%, NEC (NIPNY) +1.52%, Hitachi (HIT) +1.49%

* Decliners: Sanyo (SANYY) -1.12%, there were no other liquid ADRs that lost more than 1%