Tokyo: Tokyo stocks rose moderately on Friday, helped by Wall Street rallies and a cheaper yen again
Tokyo: Tokyo stocks rose moderately on Friday, helped by Wall Street rallies and a cheaper yen against the dollar.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index gained 0.50 percent or 113.14 points to close at 22,851.75, logging a weekly gain of 0.69 percent.
The broader Topix index was up 0.29 percent or 5.15 points at 1,789.04. It gained 0.43 percent over the week.
A record high for the US tech-rich Nasdaq index and a weak yen against the dollar supported Japanese shares, said Toshikazu Horiuchi, a broker at IwaiCosmo Securities.
The dollar fetched 110.89 yen in Asian afternoon trade, up from 110.58 yen in New York and 109.99 yen in Tokyo on Thursday.
“Investors are expected to try 23,000 in Nikkei next week, but concerns over the US-China trade dispute may weigh on the market,” Horiuchi told AFP.
On Wall Street, the Nasdaq surged to a fresh record Thursday, boosted by higher media shares, as traders shrugged off trade-war worries amid signs of accelerating US growth.
Meanwhile, the euro tumbled against the dollar after the ECB sketched out a longer-than-expected timeframe for hiking interest rates.
The ECB’s timeframe, included as part of its announcement that it would end stimulus bond-buying this year, stood out all the more a day after the US Federal Reserve accelerated its schedule for hiking interest rates.
Investors largely ignored the Bank of Japan’s widely expected decision to keep its ultra-loose monetary policy unchanged.
In Tokyo, SoftBank fell 0.19 percent to 8,324 yen after reports said it is mulling an investment of dozens of billions of dollars in a solar-power project in India.
Oriental Land rallied 2.48 percent to 11,960 yen after the Tokyo Disney Resort operator announced a plan to expand the park.
Sony was up 1.07 percent at 5,445 yen while Nintendo was up 1.69 percent at 37,760.
AFP
