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Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva:

The yen rose against the dollar and Tokyo stocks ended slightly lower today, despite gains on Wall Street on Friday, reports Nikkei. Indexes remained flat. Investors are keeping a low profile, waiting for corporate earnings which should be announced next week. Japanese fund management company Asuka is also keeping a low profile, having started lowering its risk profile down to a minimum four weeks ago.

The Asuka Japanese Equity Long/Short Offshore fund (Class A (USD Fund)) started the year gaining 3.79%, but has just announced a loss of -4.28% for March 2011, bringing the YTD number to -0.62%. This $35.7m (Yen2,968m) fund uses equity L/S, event driven and macro strategies; it was launched in November 2002 and has returned +51.43% since inception.

Class B (JPY Fund) was down 3.69% in March, -0.86% YTD (+42.83% since its Oct-02 inception) and it manages Yen22,044m ($265.1m).

The trend in the Japanese equity market has completely changed after the earthquake that hit Japan on March 11th, says Asuka’s March fund report. March 11th was a Friday and the market dived the following Monday.

Equity markets also fell after news of the resulting nuclear plant accident. As the situation deteriorated on Tuesday, June contract Nikkei 225 Index Futures touched Yen7,800. March ended with the TOPIX down by -8.61%. The Nikkei 225, TSE Small and TSE Mothers all went......................

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