Nikkei in Tokyo Leads Asian Markets Weakness

Hiruki Nakamura
30 Sep, 2013
New York City

Stocks in Tokyo closed lower following the sell-off across Asia. Looming U.S. government shut down turned investors cautious. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to announce new economic and tax measures tomorrow. Toshiba Corp plans to cut television operations by half to 3,000.

[R]4:30 PM Tokyo – Stocks in Tokyo closed lower following the sell-off across Asia. Looming U.S. government shut down turned investors cautious on the last day of trading this month. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to announce new economic and tax measures tomorrow. Toshiba Corp plans to cut television operations by half to 3,000.[/R]

Markets across Asia closed lower as investors turned cautious ahead of looming shutdown of the U.S. government and growing anxieties about the debt ceiling negotiations.

The Nikkei index declined 2.1% or 315. 34 to 14,456.73 but the index still gained 8% in the month, first increase in five months.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to announce measures to revive economic growth and tax strategy.

Political wrangling in Washington rose to the world attention as the U.S. government shutdown looms at midnight on Monday. The U.S. government is likely to shutdown is lawmakers of both parties fail to agree and 800,000 federal workers are likely to be sent home tomorrow.

In addition, investors are also worried about the debt ceiling negotiations. The U.S. government is expected to run out of money as early as October 17 is lawmakers fail to revise debt limit.

Separately in Europe, Italian government drifted to a new crisis after five ministers resigned in a coalition government forcing the Enrico Letta government to seek confidence vote before the end of the week.

The yen gained against the dollar and the euro. One U.S. dollar closed at 97.56 yen.

Stocks in Review

Automakers and electronics exporters declined as the yen strengthened.

Toyota Motor Corp declined 2.6% to 6,270 yen Nissan Motor fell 2.2% to 984 yen and Honda Motor Co Ltd dropped 2.7% to 3,735 yen.

Sony Corp decreased 0.4% to 2,098 yen and Hitachi, Ltd declined 2.7% to 647 yen.

Hitachi plans to eliminate 3,000 jobs around the world in its television business as the diversified conglomerate looks to outsource many of the operations in the unit.

Softbank Corp decreased 1.5% to 6,790 yen and Fast Retailing Co Ltd fell 2.4% to 36,850 yen.