Japan Foreign Reserves Surge

123jump.com Staff
07 Nov, 2007
New York City

Stocks in Japan fell as investors worried that rising commodities and oil prices may hurt the consumer. Yen firmed against dollar. Nikkei 225 index fell 153 to 16,096. Japan reported foreign reserve balance at the end of October increased to $954 billion. Toyota Motors second quarter net income rose 11%. Softbank earnings surged 64%, and Yamada Denki profit increased 31%. Dollar continued its slide against Asian currencies and euro.

[R]6:00AM New York, 7:00PM Tokyo - Tokyo closes lower at 0.94% on rising yen. Japan’s foreign exchange reserves climb to record $804.8 billion in October.[/R]

In Tokyo trading Nikkei 225 declined from a 0.5% surge induced by bargain hunting in the morning session to close lower 0.94% or 152.95 to 16,096.68, while the broad Topix Index shed 17.90 to 1,556.69.

In the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange 8.5 billion shares valued at 1.0 trillion were traded and in the second section 476 million shares valued at 6.2 billion yen changed hands.

Of the Nikkei 225 stocks, 53 rose, 167 fell, and 5 were unchanged. Taiyo Yuden led gainers, rising 4.38%, followed rises in Nitto Boseki of 3.72%, in OJI Paper Company Limited of 3.71%, in Mitsui Minerals & Smelting of 3.71%, and Sumitomo Metal Mining of 2.57%.

Commodity stocks rose on soaring prices of metals. Copper prices rose 1% and gold jumped to a 27-year high of $827 per ounce.

Oil prices rose 1.3% to a record $98 per barrel. However, energy stocks fell. Inpex Holdings declined 2.40%, Nippon Oil Corp slid 3.82%, and Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K fell 1.35%.

Shimizu Corporation led decliners in the Nikkei 225 index plunging 7.38%, followed by losses of 7.05% in J Front Retailing, 6.81% in Ebara Corporation, 6.38% in Credit Saison Company, and 6.16% in Obayashi Corporation.

Exporters fell after the yen firmed to 113.76 from 113.78 against the dollar. Canon plummeted 1.55%, Matsushita Electric Industrial Company plunged 4.46% and Sony Corporation dipped 0.72%.

Japan’s Ministry of Finance announced today the country’s foreign exchange reserve assets climbed $ 8.883 billion to a record $954.484 billion as of October 31.

According to the statistics from the ministry, securities amounted to $804.839 billion, deposits stood at $125.420 billion, the International Monetary Fund was at $1.448 billion, SDR’s added up to $2.991 billion and gold accounted for $19.423 billion yen.

Toyota Motor Corporation second quarter net income increased 11% to 450.9 billion yen beating the estimates of 445 billion yen.

The automakers profits were spurred by increased sales in Russia and Asian countries on the popularity of Camry. Sales in the U.S. however declined 5% to 671,000 vehicles and in Europe increased 7.5% to 302,000 vehicles.

Sales in the quarter rose to 6.49 trillion-yen from 5.83 trillion yen. Net income is expected to rise to 1.7 trillion yen in the fiscal year 2008 ending in March from 1.65 trillion in the fiscal year 2007. Annual sales in the fiscal 2008 are estimated at 25.4 trillion yen.
Toyota will open an assembly plant in Russia to meet rising demand driven by annual wage gains of 6% in the last two years.

SoftBank Corp also reported today that second quarter net income grew 64% to 21.3 billion yen after it attracted more new customers then NTT DoCoMo and KDDI Corp combined. UBS and Credit Suisse raised the stock rating. Softbank closed 0.60% up.

Yamada Denki reported first half net income increase of 31% and raised its full year forecast by 7.3% on sales of flat panel televisions and computers.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Limited received a one billion yen order from Electrobas Termonuclear S.A., electric utility of Brazil, related to nuclear reactor. Mitsubishi Heavy fell 2.83%.