Tokyo’s stock market closed sharply higher on Thursday, ending a seven-day losing streak helped by a weak yen and rising technology stocks, after Wall Street initially reacted negatively to a mixed inflation gauge. The capital’s flagship Nikkei index jumped 3.41 percent to 36,833.27 points by 0600 GMT, while the broader Topix index gained 2.44 percent to 2,592.50 points.
On Wednesday, the US consumer price index (CPI) for August showed inflation at 2.5% year-on-year, broadly in line with analysts’ expectations and the lowest since February 2021. But core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, rebounded month-on-month to 0.3% in August from 0.2% in July. This was the latest data released before the US Federal Reserve (Fed) meets next week, as it prepares to make the first rate cut of this monetary cycle.
“Expectations for (policy) rates are still mixed about what will happen after September, so some caution could return as we approach the Fed meeting.”explained Jun Rong Yeap, an analyst at IG Asia, to Bloomberg.
Weakening Yen Pays Off
On the stock market, export-related stocks recovered thanks to the weakening of the Japanese currency, particularly in the automotive sector, with Toyota (+3.75%), Honda (+3.60%) and Nissan (+1.49%). Japanese stocks linked to semiconductors also climbed after the progression of the American giant Nvidia the day before on Wall Street: Advantest jumped 9.19%, Tokyo Electron gained 4.81% and Disco Corp 4.90%.
The dollar fell to 142.58 at 06:12 GMT against 143.36 yen on Wednesday at 21:00 GMT. The euro fell to 157.13 yen against 156.77 yen the day before, and was trading at 1.1020 dollars instead of 1.1012 dollars on Wednesday. On the oil market, the price of a barrel of American WTI increased by 1.01% to 67.99 dollars and that of Brent from the North Sea gained 1.10% to 71.39 dollars at 06:04 GMT.
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