I was looking for some good news, but, Stan.
Japan stocks' winning streak snuffed out at close
TOKYO, June 4 (Reuters)
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Japanese stocks saw their winning streak snuffed out at the end of Wednesday trading, as technical resistance and worries the rally had gone too fast prevented the Nikkei from posting its first six-day rise since January 2001.
The Nikkei average had been up for most of the session after Wall Street rose again on hopes for a U.S. economic recovery, but ended down 0.08 percent at 8,557.86 after rising as high as 8,671.56 -- its best since February 21 -- in the morning.
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The TOPIX index ended up 0.18 percent at 850.94.
The Nikkei had also cleared resistance at its 200-day moving average in the morning for the first time in 11 months, but ended below the 200-day average of 8,631.13.
"With the Nikkei having passed the 200-day average in the morning, selling pressure kicked in," said Masayoshi Yano, senior manager of investment information at Tokai Tokyo Securities.
"The pitch of the rise has been too fast...but this is mostly just a technical retreat - there is still room for more gains if overseas markets rise further."
Other traders said the dollar's fall back into the 118 yen zone helped trigger selling of high-techs. Investors are also wary of buying actively ahead of an update by U.S. chip giant Intel Corp on Thursday on its April-June performance.
Chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron Ltd ended down 0.56 percent at 5,310 yen, hit by profit-taking after scoring a three-month high of 5,540 in morning trade following the U.S. Nasdaq's rally to a fresh one-year high.
TDK Corp also ended down 2.01 percent at 5,360 yen. But the electronics parts maker came off a session low of 5,310 after it said orders for its data-reading heads for hard-disk drives (HDD) exceeded forecasts and production capacity in April and May.
TDK President Hajime Sawabe told Reuters in an interview that HDD head orders were running above its estimates of a 33 percent global market share.
Overall volume spiked to 1.203 billion shares on the main bourse's first section on Wednesday, the highest in nearly three months. Decliners outnumbered advancers 765 to 604. |
