Keeping Track ...

tokyo turns around

tokyo's prolonged stock market slump is finally over, says one of Wall Street's premier investment houses.

"The bear market that began on Dec. 30, 1989 ended ... March 5," Alexander Kinmont, a London-based analyst for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, declared Wednesday.

And that bodes well not just for investors in Japan, who poured money into the Tokyo market this week, but for the rest of the world. Japan is considered the engine of growth for Asia, which accounts for about two-thirds of the world's economy.

Japan's primary stock index, the Nikkei 225, responded by jumping about 10 percent last week.