Tokyo Stocks Turn Lower in Morning

Tokyo (Jiji Press)- Stocks lost ground on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Thursday morning, as investors moved to lock in profits following the previous day's surge.
At the morning close, the 225-issue Nikkei average stood down 24.58 points, or 0.24 pct, at 10,432.78. On Wednesday, the key market gauge rose 182.86 points.
The TOPIX index of all first-section issues was down 1.99 points, or 0.21 pct, at 927.65, after rising 16.12 points the previous day.
The market got off to a weak start after U.S. shares showed mixed performances in overnight trading, brokers said.
As the key Nikkei average rose over 200 points in the two trading days through Wednesday, stocks were hit by profit-taking, said Nagayuki Yamagishi, investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co.
But the market resisted falling further thanks to a series of favorable earnings reports by U.S. and Japanese companies, brokers said.
Despite the fall in the morning, "market sentiment appears solid," Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co., said.

Thanks to the corporate earnings improvement, Tokyo stocks pared most of their early losses in late morning, Yamagishi, said, adding that the market is likely to turn higher soon.
The market's downside seemed to be supported by a better-than-expected U.S. private-sector employment report for January released by Automatic Data Processing Inc. on Wednesday, he said.
Still, investors appear to be finding it difficult to build fresh positions ahead of the release on Friday of the U.S. government's jobs data for January, brokers said.
Losers exceeded winners 867 to 596 on the TSE's first section in the morning, while 196 issues were unchanged.
Half-day volume came to 921 million shares.

Office equipment maker Ricoh plunged 9.93 pct, due to investor disappointment at the lack of upward revisions to its earnings projections for the business year to March in a report released Wednesday.
Automakers Toyota, Nissan and Honda met with selling, as did high-tech companies Fanuc, Sharp and Canon.
Chip-related companies Advantest and Tokyo Electron weakened.
Megabanks Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui were downbeat.
Also on the minus side were telecoms carries NTT, KDDI and Softbank.
By contrast, Fast Retailing rose 4.00 pct after reporting Wednesday the first year-on-year growth in same-store sales at its domestic Uniqlo casual closing chain in January.
Brokerage houses Nomura, Daiwa and Mizuho Securities were upbeat. Trading houses Mitsui, Sumitomo and Mitsubishi also attracted buying.