Staff of Reuters Read for 2 minutes Reuters, TOKYO, June 29 – As breakouts of the highly contagious COVID-19 variant Delta stoked concerns about a worldwide recovery, Japanese stocks fell on Tuesday, with weaker cyclical firms outweighing advances in technology names. By 0208 GMT, the Nikkei stock average had dropped 0.94 percent to 28,774.35 points, while the wider Topix had dropped 0.90 percent to 1,948,03 points. “Following losses in the Dow and European markets, investors are selling Japanese cyclical stocks. The market is not taking benefit of the Nasdaq’s strong finish overnight since Japan lacks stocks that are equal to GAFA shares “Soichiro Matsumoto, Credit Suisse Private Banking’s top investment officer in Japan, stated. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 indexes both set new highs overnight, boosted by large tech equities like Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was driven down by cyclicals. “There are also concerns about the COVID-19 variant’s dissemination. Because Japan is hosting the Olympics, the country’s economic prospects are particularly grim, and its impact on the pandemic is uncertain.” While unvaccinated Britons were subjected to new restrictions in Spain and Portugal, 80 percent of Australians were subjected to stricter restrictions as the virus spread across the country. Two arriving athletes in Tokyo, the host city for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, have tested positive for COVID-19. Among the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s 33 industrial subindices, energy and steel indexes led the falls, while precision instruments producers traded higher. Nexon Co Ltd surged the most on the Nikkei, with a gain of 4.28 percent, followed by NEC with a gain of 3.69 percent and Fujitsu with a gain of 1.15 percent. The Nikkei’s largest loss was Yamaha Motor, which was down 5.42 percent, followed by Takashimaya, which was down 4.75 percent, and Yokohama Rubber, which was down 4.52 percent. (Junko Fujita contributed reporting, and Uttaresh.V edited the piece.) Continue reading
