business
Tokyo stocks fall on profit-taking, stronger yen
Tokyo stocks end lower despite a positive lead from Wall Street following a better-than-expected jobs report. – Reuters file pic, March 7, 2016.Tokyo stocks fell today, slipping for the first session in five as a stronger yen weighed on exporters and investors turned to profit-taking following recent gains.
The retreat came despite an upbeat mood on most regional trading floors following a strong pick-up in US job creation and another jump in oil prices.
Yoshinori Ogawa, a market strategist at Okasan Securities, said recent gains in Japan's equity markets mean that it is "at a level where we can easily get selling".
"US wages not being as good as we thought may be a weight on the market, but the jobs data overall isn't looking bad," Ogawa told Bloomberg News.
In Tokyo the benchmark Nikkei 225 index dipped 0.61%, or 103.46 points, to close at 16,911.32. The broader Topix index of first-section shares lost 0.98%, or 13.45 points, to end at 1,361.90.
Japanese shares have risen over the past two weeks, with the blue-chip Nikkei climbing around six percent last week.
The gains come after a hammering at the start of the year, and Tokyo's two key indices are still down more than 11% in 2016.
"Shares rebounded quite a bit," Seiji Iwama, a fund manager at Daiwa SB Investments, told Bloomberg.
"Now we need to re-evaluate the situation.”
Tokyo stocks ended lower despite a positive lead from Wall Street on Friday following a better-than-expected jobs report.
The US Labour Department said the world's top economy added a robust 242,000 jobs in February, although the data also showed a drop in wages.
On Monday investors weighed a weekend announcement by China cutting its growth target for this year to a range of 6.5% to 7.0%.
The dollar fell to ¥113.65 (RM4.09) from ¥113.79 in New York late Friday.
A stronger yen dents the profitability of Japan's exporters and decreases appetite for their shares.
Toyota lost 2.07% to ¥6,100, while mobile carrier SoftBank dropped 1.82% to ¥5,754.
Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing, a market heavyweight, bucked the downtrend, rising 0.23% to ¥34,490.
Higher oil prices failed to lift petroleum-linked shares, with JX Holdings falling 1.96% to ¥469.9 and Inpex off 2.14% at ¥950.5. – AFP, March 7, 2016.
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