Japanese Market Slightly Higher

(RTTNews) - The Japanese stock market is trading slightly higher on Wednesday after opening in the red, reversing some of the losses in the previous session, following the mixed cues from Wall Street overnight. The Nikkei 225 is falling below the 50,900 level, with gains in automakers and financial stocks partially offset by weakness in technology stocks.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is up 48.50 or 0.10 percent at 50,891.43, after hitting a low of 50,537.50 and a high of 51,017.84 earlier. Japanese stocks ended modestly lower on Tuesday.

Market heavyweight SoftBank Group is tumbling almost 6 percent, while Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing is edging up 0.2 percent. Among automakers, Honda is gaining more than 2 percent and Toyota is adding almost 2 percent.

In the tech space, Advantest is losing almost 2 percent, Screen Holdings is edging down 0.5 percent and Tokyo Electron is declining more than 2 percent.

In the banking sector, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial and Mizuho Financial are gaining more than 2 percent each, while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial is advancing more than 3 percent.

Among the major exporters, Mitsubishi Electric is edging down 0.2 percent, while Panasonic is gaining more than 2 percent, Canon is up more than 1 percent and Sony is advancing more than 3 percent. Among other major gainers, Mitsui Kinzoku is skyrocketing almost 19 percent, JGC Holdings is soaring more than 11 percent, NEXON is surging almost 7 percent and Ajinomoto is jumping more than 7 percent, while Kirin Holdings and Sumitomo Realty & Development are gaining more than 6 percent each. Shiseido is adding more than 5 percent and Fujikura is up more than 4 percent, while Nitto Denko Corp, M3, Olympus, TDK, Takeda Pharmaceutical and Dowa Holdings are advancing more than 3 percent each.

Conversely, Sumco is plummeting almost 18 percent, while Nichirei and Kajima are declining almost 3 percent each.

In economic news, the M2 money stock in Japan was up 1.6 percent on year in October, the Bank of Japan said on Wednesday - coming in at 1,270.1 trillion yen. That was shy of expectations for an increase of 1.8 percent following the downwardly revised 1.5 percent increase in September (originally 1.6 percent).

The M3 money stock rose an annual 1.0 percent to 1,617.8 trillion yen, roughly steady from the previous month. The L money stock climbed 2.2 percent to 2.230 trillion yen, up from the 2.1 percent gain a month earlier.

In the currency market, the U.S. dollar is trading in the lower 154 yen-range on Wednesday.

On the Wall Street, stock indexes moved in starkly opposite directions during trading on Tuesday following the rally seen to start the week. While the Dow extended the strong upward move seen on Monday and the S&P 500 recovered from early weakness, the tech-heavy NASDAQ has slipped back to the downside.

The Dow jumped 559.33 points or 1.18 percent to finish at 47,927.96, while the NASDAQ slumped 58.87 points or 0.25 percent to close at 23,468.30 and the S&P 500 rose 14.18 points or 0.21 percent to end at 6,846.61.

Meanwhile, the major European markets all moved to the upside on the day. While the German DAX Index rose 0.53 percent, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index climbed 1.15 percent and the French CAC 40 Index gained 1.25 percent.