Nikkei up as investors buy techs
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TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japanese stocks rose in mid-morning trade on Thursday as investors sought bargains among winners in the technology sector, namely those related to booming digital consumer electronics products.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co extended gains into a second day and rose 1.79 percent, helping send the tech-sensitive Nikkei average up 0.97 percent or 106.77 points to 11,109.16.
The broader Topix index was up 0.62 percent at 1,076.98.
The Nikkei earlier rose as high as 11,115.13, up 112.74 points from the previous close. It fell 100.71 points in the previous session, which marked its first retreat in the past four sessions.
Investors, including foreign institutions, continued to show an appetite for select stocks with better earnings prospects, analysts said.
But the Tokyo market appeared to be lagging behind other global stock markets in recent weeks. The Nikkei rose only three percent this month to date, compared with a rally of nearly seven percent in the U.S. tech-laden Nasdaq market.
Matsushita, Japan's second-largest consumer electronics maker and the maker of Panasonic brand products, earlier hit a new 18-month high of 1,649 yen.
Rival Sanyo Electric Co rose 1.5 percent to 608 yen, a 20-month high.
"I'm optimistic about the market's prospect," said Hiroyuki Nakai, chief strategist at Tokai Tokyo Securities.
"Wood without heart is easy to bend, but we can clearly see the heart this time, or a consensus in stock-picking. That's digital electronics."
Some analysts said, however, they saw little room for stocks to rise much further for now as expectations of solid earnings and a slew of upward revisions from blue-chip firms had already been factored into share prices, pushing the Nikkei to a three-month closing high of 11,103.10 earlier this week.
Japanese banks and other institutional investors were seen eager to sell near the 11,000 level for the Nikkei due to their relatively cautious view on the market and the economy.
Also, given a likely trend among many investors of "buy the rumor, sell the fact," aggressive buying may be curbed unless earnings reports come far above expectations, analysts said.
Monex Inc, Japan's second-biggest online brokerage by number of accounts, lost 2.94 percent at 59,500 yen after it said on Wednesday it had scored a profit for the third quarter in a row in October-December, thanks to solid stock market turnover.
The shares of Monex, in the red for four years since it started in 1999, had risen 33 percent this month in anticipation of the strong results. The earnings were announced after the market closed on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in Asia many markets, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, were closed for Chinese New Year celebrations.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX200 was nearly half a percent firmer at 3322 points, while across the Tasman Sea, the New Zealand Top 50 index had shed 0.31 percent to 2492.99.
Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
