TOKYO (Nikkei)--Foreign investors are on track to account for more than 40% of Japanese stock market transactions on average in calendar 2000, according to data compiled by the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

In the first week of December, foreign investors were responsible for 59% of transactions on the TSE, the Osaka Securities Exchange and the Nagoya Stock Exchange, excluding trades carried out by brokerage dealers.

Trading value by foreign investors so far this year has reached 142 trillion yen, already ahead of the figure for the whole of 1999.

Net selling by foreign investors this year amounts to 2.4 trillion yen so far. Overseas investors "continue to reshuffle portfolio allocations, selling high-tech issues and buying domestic demand-related stocks," a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Japan Ltd. broker said.

Domestic individual investors have been hard to find, having suffered losses since the boom in Internet stocks ended in spring.

The ratio of foreign investors in the Japanese stock market has steadily been rising since 1990 when it was 13%.

(The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Friday morning edition)