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Tokyo dips on Wall Street's fall
TOKYO, Japan -- Japanese stocks are lower in morning trade Thursday after a dip on Wall Street. The Nikkei 225 average is down 0.52 percent at 9717.88 after climbing more than five percent in the past four sessions to Wednesday's two-week high of 9752.75. The broader Topix index is 0.22 percent lower to 949.62. Elsewhere in the region, South Korea is up about half a percent and Australia is just in the black. New Zealand is down about a third of a percent. The moves in Asia follow a down day on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones industrial average slipping 0.4 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq ending virtually flat, off 0.02 percent. (Full story) A resurgence in bond yields raised concern that higher borrowing costs could choke off a U.S. economic recovery. But U.S. President George W. Bush defended his economic policy Wednesday, saying he was optimistic about job creation. (Full story) In Tokyo, big bank UFJ Holdings, which rose more than 9 percent Wednesday and 8 percent on Tuesday to a 2003 high, is down 2.2 percent to 260,000 yen. Mizuho Holdings is off about 1 percent. But investors are still pouring money into steelmaker JFE Holdings and some other industrial stocks, encouraged by this week's upbeat GDP data. "Investors are taking profits. That move is most clearly evident in UFJ's decline," Koji Muneoka, head of domestic sales trading at HSBC, told Reuters. "But foreign investors are still buying cyclicals. There's not much selling on these shares." Automakers were mixed, with Toyota up about 0.3 percent but small falls for Honda and Nissan. In the tech sector, big exporter Sony is about half a percent ahead to 3650 yen, and Matsushita Electric Industrial and Toshiba are also higher. But there are falls for Fujitsu, Hitachi, Canon and Kyocera. The market's biggest stock, NTT DoCoMo, is up 0.35 percent to 288,000 yen. JFE, Japan's second-largest steelmaker, is 0.88 percent higher at 2300 yen, while rivals Nippon Steel and Kobe Steel and slightly lower after solid gains earlier in the week. In Seoul, the Kospi is 0.44 percent higher at 716.23, with a gain of 1.33 percent to 418,000 won for market heavyweight Samsung Electronics. SK Telecom is unchanged at 193,000 won. Australia's S&P/ASX200 is 0.05 percent higher at 3159.0. Media group News Corp, which posted record earnings of $1.8 billion, is down 0.5 percent to A$12.31 after a runup earlier in the week.
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