Japanese Market Sharply Lower

(RTTNews) - Giving up the gains in the previous two sessions, the Japanese market is sharply lower on Friday, following the broadly negative cues from Wall Street overnight. The Nikkei 225 is falling below the 37,100 level, with weakness across most sectors led by index heavyweights, exporters and technology stocks.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is down 641.62 points or 1.70 percent to 37,063.31, after hitting a low of 36,857.13 earlier. Japanese shares ended significantly higher on Thursday.

Market heavyweight SoftBank Group is losing more than 3 percent and Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing is also down more than 3 percent. Among automakers, Toyota is losing almost 2 percent and Honda is down more than 1 percent.

In the tech space, Advantest is losing more than 2 percent, Tokyo Electron is declining almost 3 percent and Screen Holdings is down almost 1 percent.

In the banking sector, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial and Mizuho Financial are losing almost 2 percent each, while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial is declining more than 1 percent.

Among the major exporters, Sony is losing more than 5 percent, Panasonic is down almost 1 percent and Canon is declining more than 3 percent, while Mitsubishi Electric is gaining more than 2 percent.

Among other major losers, Nintendo is tumbling more than 7 percent and Chugai Pharmaceutical is slipping more than 5 percent, while Terumo and Fujikura are losing almost 5 percent each. Sapporo Holdings is down more than 4 percent, while Hitachi, Trend Micro, Konami Group and Furukawa Electric are declining almost 4 percent each. Olympus and Mitsui Fudosan are down more than 3 percent each.

Conversely, West Japan Railway and Kubota are gaining almost 3 percent each.

In the currency market, the U.S. dollar is trading in the lower 148 yen-range on Friday.

On Wall Street, stocks showed a substantial move back to the downside during trading on Thursday after recovering from early weakness to end the previous session sharply higher. With the steep drops on the day, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 tumbled to five and four-month closing lows, respectively.

The major averages moved roughly sideways going into the close, lingering near their worst levels of the day. The Nasdaq plummeted 483.48 points or 2.6 percent to 18,069.26, the S&P 500 plunged 104.11 points or 1.8 percent at 5,738.52 and the Dow slumped 427.51 points or 1.0 percent to 42,579.08.

Meanwhile, the major European markets turned in a mixed performance on the day. While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index slid by 0.8 percent, the French CAC 40 Index rose by 0.3 percent and the German DAX Index shot up by 1.5 percent.

Crude oil prices settled slightly higher on Thursday after some wild swings amid uncertainty about the outlook for oil demand, and on possible excess supply in the market. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for April settled at $66.36 a barrel, up $0.05 percent from previous close.