Tokyo, Nov. 10 (Jiji Press)–Stocks headed lower on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Monday morning, following a downturn in U.S. stocks last Friday.
The market little reacted to Sunday’s general election in which Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s ruling coalition retained power but with a reduced majority in the House of Representatives, as the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan scored big gains.
“The election results came within market expectations,” said Kenichi Hirano, equity general manager at Tachibana Securities Co. “The market had factored in late last week the possibilities that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party would fight a close battle.”
At the morning close, the 225-issue Nikkei average stood down 78.99 points at 10,549.99. On Friday, the average gained 76.68 points.
The TOPIX index of all first-section issues was down 6.11 points at 1,039.04. It ended up 9.58 points in the previous session.(MORE)Tokyo Stocks Retreat in Morning
Declining issues outnumbered gainers 749 to 612 on the first section in the morning, while 156 issues were flat.
Half-day volume came to 438 million shares.
The Nikkei average briefly lost some 145 points in early trading, disheartened by a setback on Wall Street, where investors sought to take profit, finding that October payroll data indicating a healthy recovery in the U.S. job market had already been priced in.
The key market gauge, however, resisted a further decline helped partly by index-based buying from institutional investors, brokers said.
Analysts said the market’s soft tone also reflected profit- taking selling from foreign investors, who should play a key role in driving up the Nikkei, ahead of book closings of many hedge funds this month.
Trading was thin amid lack of fresh incentives and players were in search of the next direction, said Kenichi Azuma, strategist at Cosmo Securities Co.
Tachibana’s Hirano pointed out that the market is starting to shift its attention to key Japanese economic indicators due out later this week, including September machinery orders data to be released on Tuesday and July-September gross domestic product on Friday.(MORE)Tokyo Stocks Retreat in Morning
The major banking groups of Mizuho, Sumitomo Mitsui, UFJ and Mitsubishi Tokyo posted losses.
Also softer were telecom carriers KDDI, NTT and NTT DoCoMo.
Among technology powerhouses, Advantest, Tokyo Electron, Hitachi and Toshiba were in negative territory.
In contrast, automakers gained ground, among them Toyota, Mazda and Suzuki.
Drug makers like Takeda, Sankyo and Yamanouchi advanced.
Construction machinery maker Komatsu was upbeat and was the most heavily traded issue on the TSE’s first section in the morning as the company revised up its earnings prospects for the current business year to March 2004.END
