Tokyo Stocks Fall in Morning on Dow's Fall, Firmer Yen

Tokyo, May 16 (Jiji Press)--Stocks stayed under selling pressure after a two-day fall on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Monday morning, pressured by U.S. equities' fall late last week and the yen's strengthening against the euro.
At the morning close, the 225-issue Nikkei average stood down 60.92 points, or 0.63 pct, at 9,587.85. On Friday, the key market gauge fell 67.88 points.
The TOPIX index of all first-section issues was down 7.63 points, or 0.91 pct, at 832.31, after losing 9.40 points the previous trading day.
The Nikkei average moved in negative territory throughout the morning session in the wake of the Dow Jones industrial average's drop of over 100 points on Friday, which reflected growing concerns over the fiscal woes of Greece and investors' receding risk appetite.
The yen's rise against Europe's single currency on the exchange market prompted selling in the export sector, brokers said.
In addition, analysts said renewed worries about the state of the tsunami-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant weighed on the Tokyo market after the plant's operator on Sunday confirmed a partial meltdown at one of the reactors at the plant.

Now that most Japanese companies finished releasing their earnings reports for fiscal 2010, "investors looked abroad and began worrying about the possibility of global stock markets entering a correction," with commodity price falls signaling shrinkage of risk money, said Kenichi Hirano, operating officer of Tachibana Securities Co.
"That's one of the reasons why the market did not react much to the surprising good machinery order report," Hirano said.
The report, announced just before Monday's market opening, showed that Japan's seasonally adjusted core machinery orders in March rose 2.9 pct from the previous month, beating a median forecast of a 9.7 pct fall among 27 economic research institutions polled by Jiji Press.
The machinery order data, however, did serve to support the market's downside, together with Japanese corporate earnings figures released through last week, which did not turn out as bad as feared, Hirano said.
Falling issues outnumbered rising ones 1,130 to 415 on the TSE's first section in the morning, while 128 issues were flat.
Half-day volume came to 886 million shares.

Among exporters, automakers Toyota and Honda fell, as did technology issues Sharp and Panasonic.
Banking groups like Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui remained weak after Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano on Friday suggested the need for some debt waiver for Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the troubled nuclear plant.
On the plus side were general contractors like Kajima and telecommunications giant NTT.
Tire maker Bridgestone jumped 2.58 pct after revising up its earnings forecasts on Friday.