Nikkei fails to break 9,000 ahead of Fed decision TOKYO, Sept 13 - Japan's Nikkei average rose on Thursday to end just below the key 9,000 mark on mounting expectations of fresh stimulus from the US Federal Reserve, with big gains for shippers and Apple suppliers buoying the market. Investors covered bearish bets ahead of the Fed decision later in the day as they waited to see if it would launch another round of bond-buying to kick start a flagging economic recovery in the US. Battered shippers were the best sectoral performer, up 5.5 per cent, while heavily shorted Nippon Sheet Glass climbed 5.2 per cent. "Anything with big shorts out there were reaping today," a senior dealer at a foreign bank said. It's basically squaring up in case something does come out of that. The Nikkei advanced 0.4 per cent to 8,995.15 but faced resistance at its 200-day moving average at 8,998.64. Expectations of a third round of quantitative easing have grown since last Friday's disappointing US jobs data. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, who framed employment concerns as a justification for further stimulus in a speech last month, will hold a news conference at 7.15pm London time, while a statement on interest rate policy will be released at 5.30pm London time. Some market participants were concerned that further US stimulus would weigh on the dollar against the yen, hurting Japanese exporters. The first round of quantitative easing from the Fed helped the Nikkei surge 23 per cent in the subsequent three months, and it climbed nearly 12 per cent for the same period after the second dose of stimulus. But the yen is much higher now, hitting a seven-month high of Y77.651 against the dollar on Thursday. That compares with a level of around Y95 to the dollar in the three months after the first QE and around Y80-Y84 for the same period after the second round. The Nikkei is up 6.4 per cent so far this year, underperforming a 14.2 per cent rise in the S&P 500 and an 11.6 per cent gain in the pan-European Stoxx Europe 600. (The QE3) will be good for the global economy, obviously for the United States in particular. The market will be in the phase of the so-called "risk-on" again," said Hidehiro Tomioka, head of equity investment at Manulife Asset Management in Tokyo. The (Japanese) market is sort of in the low range of a trading range, so I think there is room for the market to go up. The broader Topix index added 0.3 per cent to 744.23 on Thursday. Nearly 1.29bn shares changed hands, down from Wednesday's 1.55bn and last week's average of 1.61bn. In terms of valuations, the Topix carries a 12-month forward price-to-book ratio of 0.82, way below the S&P 500"s 1.93 and the Stoxx Europe 600"s 1.33, according to Thomson Reuters Datastream.