Tokyo Stocks Climb on Wall St. Rally Buoyed by Tech Issues

Jiji Press

19:26 JST, January 23, 2023

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — Tokyo stocks continued to climb Monday fueled by a Wall Street rally, with technology names, in particular, drawing strong popularity.

The Nikkei average of 225 selected issues listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime section jumped 352.51 points, or 1.33%, to finish at 26,906.04, after gaining 148.30 points Friday.

The broader TOPIX index ended 18.51 points, or 0.96%, higher at 1,945.38, following an 11.25-point rise the previous trading day.

The market spurted at the outset on broad-based buying, with investors taking heart from rebounds in all three major U.S. stock indexes Friday.

Participants showed especially large appetite for tech stocks in view of the Nasdaq composite index’s 2.5% rally, which can partly be traced to “steeper-than-expected subscriber growth at on-demand video streaming service provider Netflix and Google parent Alphabet’s announcement of a plan to cut 12,000 jobs,” according to Maki Sawada, strategist at Nomura Securities Co.

Comments from senior U.S. Federal Reserve officials signaling a slowdown in interest rate hikes to a quarter percentage point from half a point at the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee meeting next week also made tech issues attractive, Sawada added.

On the Prime section, gainers trounced decliners 1,563 to 226 while 48 issues were unchanged. Volume rose to 977 million shares from Friday’s 952 million shares.