Tokyo stocks turned up Monday, getting a boost from a continued rally on Wall Street last week.
The 225-issue Nikkei average of the Tokyo Stock Exchange rose 213.07 points, or 0.74%, to close at 29,161.80, following a 9.83-point drop Friday.
The Topix index of all first section issues ended 5.73 points, or 0.29%, higher at 1,959.75, snapping its three-day losing streak.
The Tokyo market got off to a strong start, after all three U.S. market gauges including the Dow Jones Industrial Average extended their gains Friday thanks to data showing improvement in consumer confidence in the United States in June.
Although selling to lock in gains from the initial market spurt gathered steam in the morning, stocks gradually extended gains in the afternoon in pace with Dow futures in off-hours trading.
Trading was generally lackluster with many players taking to the sidelines ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting from Tuesday, brokers said.
Investors were especially waiting for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s news conference after the FOMC meeting, as well as monetary policymakers’ interest rates forecasts, hoping to get a clue to the direction of U.S. quantitative easing policy, they added.
Hirohumi Yamamoto, strategist at Toyo Securities Co., said U.S. stocks’ advance with the S&P 500 index rewriting its all-time closing highs last week “got sentiment better here and helped the Nikkei retake 29,000.”
“But if the Tokyo market is to head higher, investors need to have more reasons to buy, such as improvements in the coronavirus situation in Japan and the jobs market in the United States,” said Kazuo Kamitani, strategist at Nomura Securities Co.
On the TSE first section, gainers outnumbered decliners 1,109 to 972 while 113 issues were unchanged. Volume sank to 854 million shares from Friday’s 1.221 billion shares.
Semiconductor names climbed on a fall in U.S. interest rates, with passive component maker Taiyo Yuden jumping 3.29% and silicon wafer producer Shin-Etsu Chemical 2.36%.
Heavyweight Nikkei components including clothing retailer Fast Retailing and medical information provider M3 attracted buying.
Among other noticeable winners were industrial robot producer Fanuc and tire-maker Yokohama Rubber.
Conversely, video game-makers, such as Nintendo and Konami, were sold back by investors who bought them before the E3 game trade show opened Saturday.
General contractor Shimizu and trader Itochu were downbeat as well.
In index futures trading on the Osaka Exchange, the key September contract on the Nikkei average rose 260 points to end at 29,140.
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