TOKYO: Tokyo stocks closed flat on Monday with buying on brisk corporate results offset by selling to lock in profits.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index, which has risen to its highest level in 21 years recently, added 0.04 percent, or 9.23 points, to 22,548.35.
The broader Topix index was down 0.08 percent, or 1.42 points, to 1,792.66.
Foreign investors will likely continue to buy Japanese stocks given the abundance of positive factors, said Masayuki Kubota, chief strategist at Rakuten Securities.
“The world economy is robust and the Japanese economy and corporate earnings are good,” he noted in a commentary.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has a stable government following his landslide election victory last month and was confirming a strong alliance with the US with President Donald Trump in town, he added.
On Wall Street Friday all three indices ended at records, with the Nasdaq gaining the most and the Dow notching its 56th record high of 2017.
Kubota said “the biggest negative factor is that a sense of overheating has emerged in the Nikkei index short-term.”
Mazda tumbled 4.29 percent to close at 1,582 yen after releasing disappointing April-September earnings on Thursday ahead of a three-day weekend in Tokyo.
Many carmaker stocks were up, with Toyota gaining 0.19 percent at 7,169 yen and Honda rising 1.78 percent at 3,829 yen.
Mobile operator SoftBank lost 2.59 percent at 9,945 yen, after its US wireless unit Sprint and T-Mobile announced over the weekend they had called off merger talks.
T-Mobile, an affiliate of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, and Sprint are the third and fourth largest US wireless operators respectively.
Together, the pair would have had 131 million subscribers, virtually matching second-ranked AT&T and posing stiff competition to market leader Verizon Communications.
The dollar firmed to 114.39 yen from 114.05 yen in New York late Friday.
Source: Brecorder.com
