INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
TOKYO: Japan's Nikkei visited three-week lows and ended weaker on Wednesday after Wall Street's tumble hit sentiment, while falling oil
prices dragged down resource and trading-house shares.
The Nikkei share average closed 0.4 per cent lower at 21,507.54 after touching
21,243.38 in early trade, the lowest since Oct
30.
The Topix dropped 0.6 per cent to 1,615.89 after falling to as low as 1,598.54
The Topix is not far from bear market territory - defined as peak-to-trough losses of more than 20 per cent
When the Topix fell to 1,581.56 on Oct 26, it was 17 per cent below its 2018 peak of 1,911.31 in late January.
"Major factors dragging down
Japanese stocks are a sell-off in US shares and concerns about weaker forecasts in Japanese corporate earnings due to worries about weak
global growth," said Hikaru Sato, a senior technical analyst at Daiwa Securities.
Underscoring investors' risk-averse sentiment, global
cyclical resource shares such as trading houses, steelmakers and mining shares underperformed.
Marubeni Corp shed 2.7 per cent, Mitsubishi
Corp slipped 2.3 per cent, Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal declined 1.4 per cent, JFE Holdings dropped 1.3 per cent and Inpex Corp stumbled
3.3 per cent.
Before bouncing on Wednesday, oil prices tumbled more than 6 per cent on Tuesday in heavy trading volume, caught in a broader
Wall Street sell-off that was fed by mounting concerns about a slowdown in global economic growth.
Nissan Motor Co steadied 0.4 per cent
from the sharp drop on Tuesday in reaction to the arrest on Monday night of chairman Carlos Ghosn.
Traders said that an immediate impact on
Nissan's bottom line was unlikely.
Nissan has cheap valuations, with its price-to-earnings ratio around 7.52 and shares trading below book
Its dividend yield is at 5.92 per cent, compared to the Nikkei's yield at 1.98 per cent.
"Nissan is one of the popular stocks with high
dividend yields, and when the overall market is weak, retail investors tend to buy high dividend stocks," said Yoshihiro Okumura, general
manager at Chibagin Asset Management.
Department store operator Takashimaya Co nosedived 16 per cent to be the biggest loser on the main
board after it said it will issue convertible bonds
