Tokyo (awp / afp) – The Tokyo Stock Exchange was up on Thursday morning despite the mixed closing the day before on Wall Street, whose Dow Jones index, however, benefited from the solid results of large American groups.
The flagship Nikkei index gained 0.84% to 27,447.15 points around 1:10 a.m. GMT and the broader Topix index gained 0.5% to 1,924.63 points.
“Resilience in US equities, despite high uncertainty, should be a supportive factor for Japanese equities,” Okasan Online Securities commented in a note.
The New York Stock Exchange was split on Wednesday as tech stocks suffered from the downfall of streaming giant Netflix, but the Dow Jones still ended in the green, buoyed by strong corporate earnings and easing US bond rates .
On the side of values
GROWTH FOR SEMICONDUCTORS: Stocks of Japanese semiconductor makers were on a roll after Dutch giant ASML reported earnings on Wednesday. Tokyo Electron gained 2.88% to 56,310 yen, Screen Holdings 2.87% to 10,730 yen and Renesas 2.08% to 1,371 yen.
On the side of oil and currencies
The oil market progressed Thursday morning in Asia: around 01:00 GMT the price of a US barrel of WTI gained 0.25% to 102.45 dollars and that of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea 0.41% to 107.24 dollars .
On the foreign exchange market, the yen continued to weaken against the dollar, with one dollar trading around 1:10 a.m. GMT for 128.18 yen against 127.86 yen on Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. GMT.
The yen also fell against the euro, which was worth 138.99 yen against 138.76 yen the day before.
The European currency was trading for $1.0843, down from $1.0853 on Wednesday.
mac/ybl