Tokyo stocks fall on profit-taking, stronger yen

Tokyo stocks fell on Monday, slipping for the first session in five as a stronger yen weighed on exporters and investors turned to profit-taking following recent gains. The retreat came despite an upbeat mood on most regional trading floors following a strong pick-up in US job creation and another jump in oil prices. Yoshinori Ogawa, a market strategist at Okasan Securities, said recent gains in Japan's equity markets mean that it is "at a level where we can easily get selling".
"US wages not being as good as we thought may be a weight on the market, but the jobs data overall isn't looking bad," Ogawa told Bloomberg News. In Tokyo the benchmark Nikkei 225 index dipped 0.61 percent, or 103.46 points, to close at 16,911.32. The broader Topix index of first-section shares lost 0.98 percent, or 13.45 points, to end at 1,361.90. Japanese shares have risen over the past two weeks, with the bluechip Nikkei climbing around six percent last week.
The gains come after a hammering at the start of the year, and Tokyo's two key indices are still down more than 11 percent in 2016. "Shares rebounded quite a bit," Seiji Iwama, a fund manager at Daiwa SB Investments, told Bloomberg. "Now we need to re-evaluate the situation." Tokyo stocks ended lower despite a positive lead from Wall Street on Friday following a better-than-expected jobs report.
The US Labor Department said the world's top economy added a robust 242,000 jobs in February, although the data also showed a drop in wages. On Monday investors weighed a weekend announcement by China cutting its growth target for this year to a range of 6.5-7.0 percent. The dollar fell to 113.65 yen from 113.79 yen in New York late Friday.
A stronger yen dents the profitability of Japan's exporters and decreases appetite for their shares. Toyota lost 2.07 percent to 6,100 yen, while mobile carrier SoftBank dropped 1.82 percent to 5,754 yen. Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing, a market heavyweight, bucked the downtrend, rising 0.23 percent to 34,490 yen. Higher oil prices failed to lift petroleum-linked shares, with JX Holdings falling 1.96 percent to 469.9 yen and Inpex off 2.14 percent at 950.5 yen.