Tokyo stocks ease after early rally
By Nathan Layne
Tuesday March 5, 12:15 PM
TOKYO (Reuters) -
sg.biz.yahoo.com
Tokyo stocks came off an early rally to finish the morning session slightly weaker on Tuesday, pulling back from a four-day, 12 percent climb that had technical indicators overheated and screaming correction.
The modest retreat had few worried, however, given that the government's tougher stance on short-selling and strong gains on Wall Street were underpinning sentiment.
"There's no real need to fret. We needed to correct," said Sadaharu Nagumo, senior fund manager at Japan Investment Trust Management, which oversees 403 billion yen ($3 billion) of investment trusts.
The benchmark Nikkei average lost 0.40 percent or 46.22 points to 11,404.00, while the capital-weighted TOPIX index gave up 0.10 percent or 1.04 points to 1,078.00.
The Nikkei had climbed to a 6-1/2-month high of 11,602.75 in early trade following a 3.14 percent uptick on the U.S. Nasdaq index, which the Nikkei often tracks.
Even with the morning's dip, the Nikkei's 25-day moving average is 12.5 percent above the underlying average, unusually high considering a positive divergence of eight percent usually points to an overbought market.
Amid the market's slight downturn, investors moved to take profits on shares such as tyremaker Bridgestone Corp <5108> whose recent rises were seen as overdone. Bridgestone shed 2.61 percent to 1,753 yen, still up 21 percent this month. Nippon Steel Corp <5401>, Japan's largest steelmaker and the third-most active issue by volume, dropped 5.16 percent to 202 yen after Monday's rise to a nine-month high. |
