Despite a disappointing earnings season for many Japan companies, market participants point to more signs of foreign investors coming back to Japanese shares amid increased liquidity for global financial markets after the Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates near zero until at least 2014.
Nissan Motor Co (7201.T) fell 1.4 percent after earnings on profit-taking but is still up 10.3 percent this year after shedding 10.5 percent last year.
"It's just profit-taking. The stock has run quite nicely. We still think that foreigners are just slowly starting to come back to Japan," a trader at a foreign brokerage said, adding that he did not expect to stock to lose more than 2 percent on Thursday.
The automaker posted a 3.6 percent rise in quarterly operating profit on the back of strong global sales and its full-year forecasts are among the highest projected within the domestic auto industry. Nomura kept its "buy" rating on the company and its target price at 1,150 yen.
The benchmark Nikkei .N225 slid 0.6 percent to 8,965.41 by the midday trading break, moving away from its 200-day moving average near 9,060.
China's annual inflation rate accelerated to 4.5 percent in January, breaking a five-month trend of easing price pressures as consumers ramped up spending during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday season.
"It was a surprising number. You could take it as a sign of an improving economic environment in China or as a factor that lowers expectations of monetary easing and clearly, the market is seeing it as the latter," said Yoshihiko Tabei, general manager of capital markets research at Kazaka Securities.
The broader Topix .TOPX fell 0.3 percent to 780.13.
Wall Street ended flat to higher overnight in thin trade, but underlying confidence in the U.S. economy kept the Dow hovering at its highest level in nearly four years.
Masayuki Doshida, senior market analyst at Rakuten Securities said that the market was still tentative about risk-taking, adding that the Nikkei's recent rally would be capped at 9,100 ahead of an options settlement on Friday.
In Europe, Greek political leaders ended marathon discussions on a 130 billion euro bailout plan with one issue of pension cuts unresolved.
The prime minister of the debt-ridden country said discussions with the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission will continue so a deal can be achieved ahead of the euro zone finance ministers' meeting later in the day.
"The situation in Europe remains very uncertain, but you have to also keep in mind that they have delayed a decision on the debt-swap and the bailout for over a month now. I think most market participants are putting the negotiations to the side this point and will only react when there's a definite outcome."
MACHINERY STOCKS FALL
Japan's machinery subindex .IMCHN.T fell 1.2 percent after core machinery orders fell 7.1 percent in December from the previous month as worries over slowing global growth may hurt capital spending.
Construction machinery maker Komatsu Ltd (6301.T) fell 1.6 percent and industrial robot maker Fanuc Ltd (6954.T) lost 1.2 percent.
Japanese earnings continued to be downbeat.
Daikin Industries Ltd (6367.T), Japan's largest manufacturer of commercial-use air conditioners, tumbled 3.4 percent after cutting its annual net profit forecast by 21.7 percent to 36 billion yen ($468.2 million), citing unfavorable weather in Australia and Thailand as well as strength in the yen.
Out of the 135 Nikkei companies that have reported earnings, 67 percent of them missed market expectations, Thomson Reuters StarMine data showed. This compares to 34 percent for S&P 500 companies.
No comments:
Post a Comment