Tokyo shares snapped three days of losses on Wednesday as exporters got a boost from a drop in the yen while investors eye US President-elect Donald Trump's first formal news conference. The previously scheduled briefing comes just as US spy chiefs have reportedly told Trump that Russian operatives claim to possess deeply compromising personal and financial information about him.
The tycoon dismissed a CNN story on the issue as a "political witch hunt". "There's still buying appetite from individual investors who were unable to get on the recent rally," said Hiroyasu Iida, head of the investment research centre at Aizawa Securities. But "it's difficult to take on a lot of risk before ...Trump's speech" later Wednesday, he told Bloomberg News. In Tokyo, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index gained 0.33 percent, or 63.23 points, to end at 19,364.67, while the broader Topix index of all first-section issues rose 0.52 percent, or 8.09 points, to 1,550.40.
In currency markets, the dollar rose to 116.06 yen from 115.76 yen in New York Tuesday afternoon. A weaker yen tends to spur demand for shares of Japanese exporters because it makes their products more competitive abroad and inflates the value of repatriated profits. Sony jumped 3.41 percent to 3,510 yen while Toyota was up 0.74 percent at 6,912 yen.
Toshiba soared 4.33 percent to 301.1 yen after news reports that the troubled conglomerate's key lenders have agreed to maintain its financing through February. Banking giant Mitsubishi UFJ rose 1.51 percent to 737.7 yen and rival Mizuho Financial was up 1.65 percent at 215.6 yen. Market heavyweight Fanuc, a factory automation systems maker, climbed 1.02 percent to 20,275 yen after the Nikkei business daily reported it would boost industrial robot production as global demand picked up.
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