Nikkei climbs 2.8 pct to above 14,000, highest in nearly 5 years

Business & Markets 2013
Written by Reuters
Tuesday, 07 May 2013 12:12
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TOKYO (May 7): The Nikkei average jumped 2.8 percent on Tuesday to
break above 14,000 for the first time since June 2008 as the market
played catch-up from an extended holiday, with last week's strong U.S.
jobs data easing concerns over the health of Japan's major export
market.
The Nikkei was up 389.22 points at 14,083.26 by the midday break
after closing for public holidays on Friday and Monday. Tuesday's rally
took the benchmark above 13,988, the 61.8 percent retracement of its
slide from February 2007 to October 2008.
A senior dealer at a foreign bank said their buy orders outpaced sell by
2-1/2 times.
"We picked up a very decent size buy programme out of the domestic accounts," he said. "I think smart money domestic
(investors) are sellers at around 15,000. They are not going to sell here. The market can keep going."
But he added Japanese corporate earnings "are a little bit crappy ... people are just a little bit disappointed." Of the 65 Nikkei
companies that have reported quarterly earnings so far, 54 percent of them either beat or met market expectations,
according to Thomson Reuters StarMine.
A stronger-than-expected U.S. nonfarm payrolls for April, with 165,000 jobs being added and the unemployment rate falling to
7.5 percent, the lowest since December 2008, provided much needed relief to investors rattled by a series of soft data in
recent weeks.
The United States is Japan's biggest export market, followed closely by China. A run of soft data from China was also a
factor in the recent selloff in commodities and other riskier markets.
Japanese exporters led the rally, with Toyota Motor Corp,Sony Corp, semiconductor equipment maker Tokyo Electron Ltd
and Suzuki Motor Corp up between 4.5 and 6 percent.
Sony was the most traded stock on the main board by turnover, while Toyota took third spot.
Yen weak
The sector was also helped by renewed weakness in the yen, which fell as low as 99.46 on Monday on the back of the
upbeat U.S. jobs data last Friday. The yen last traded at 98.99 yen to the dollar.
The Japanese currency has weakened 22 percent against the dollar since mid-November while the Nikkei has jumped 63
percent after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began promising to revive the economy with expansionary monetary and fiscal
policies, dubbed as "Abenomics", during his election campaign.
The yen's declines gathered fresh momentum after the Bank of Japan's April 4 announcement of a radical monetary
expansion campaign to end two decades of stagnation.
The broader Topix index advanced 2.6 percent to 1,183.60, with volume at 49 percent of its full daily average of the past 90
trading days.
Stefan Worrall, director of equity cash sales at Credit Suisse, said Tuesday's rally mirrored the trend in overseas markets in
the last few days while Japan was on holiday and may not last the rest of the week.
"The question is 'where to now?'," Worrall said. "We still have the majority of corporate earnings to come through in the next
two weeks."
JPMorgan said it expected the Nikkei to trade around 14,150 based on the correlation between the yen/won exchange rate
and Tokyo index. The yen hit a more than five-year low of 11.0057 won on Tuesday.
"According to regression analysis, the sensitivity in the Nikkei against JPY/KRW movements strengthened since mid-March,"
it said in a note.
"While Japan's stock market was closed last Friday and Monday, the current JPY/KRW level suggests the Nikkei index should
be 14,150."