Japanese Market Recovers After Early Weakness

(RTTNews) - The Japanese stock market shrugged off a weak opening and bounced back into positive territory on Friday. However, gains are muted as investors remain cautious ahead of the U.S. monthly jobs report, which will be released even as the markets are closed for the Good Friday holiday.

In late-morning trades, the benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is adding 49.24 points or 0.25 percent to 19,362.03, after touching a low of 19289.04 earlier.

Among the tech stocks, Advantest is up 0.5 percent and Casio Computer is higher by 0.8 percent. Meanwhile, Toshiba is losing 0.6 percent, Fanuc is edging down 0.06 percent and Hitachi is declining 0.7 percent.

Among the other major exporters, Sony is gaining more than 3 percent, Nikon Corp is up 0.8 percent and Panasonic is adding 0.3 percent.

In the banking space, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial (MTU) is losing 0.7 percent, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial is declining 1.5 percent and Mizuho Financial (MFG) is lower by 1.2 percent.

In the auto sector, Toyota (TM) is down 0.3 percent and Nissan is declining 0.9 percent, while Honda (HMC) is adding 0.4 percent.

According to the Nikkei business daily, Toyota plans to spend about 150 billion yen to build new plants in China and Mexico, ending a freeze on plant constructions. The company will make an announcement later in April.

Meanwhile, Nissan's Chinese sales for the month of March declined 5.4 percent, while Honda's sales increased 14.7 percent.

Seven & I's shares are down 1.7 percent despite the retail giant saying it expects a 9 percent increase in operating profit for the fiscal year ended February to 373 billion yen.

Credit Saison has acquired a 49 percent stake in HDFinance, a commercial bank in Vietnam, for undisclosed financial terms. Shares of the company are up 0.8 percent.

Among the other major gainers, Kikkoman Corp. is advancing 1.8 percent, Hokietsu Kishu Paper Co. is adding 1 percent and KDDI Corp. is up 0.5 percent. Meanwhile, Mitsui Mining & Smelting is down more than 1 percent.

In the currency market, the U.S. dollar traded in the upper 119-yen range on Friday, up from the mid 119-yen range on Thursday.

On Wall Street, stocks managed to end the session higher on Thursday ahead of the long holiday weekend.

The strength on Wall Street partly reflected the recent volatility shown by the markets. Traders were also reacting to the latest batch of U.S. economic data, including a report from the Labor Department showing that initial jobless claims unexpectedly fell to a two-month low in the week ended March 28th.

The Dow climbed 65.06 points or 0.4 percent to 17,763.24, the Nasdaq edged up 6.71 points or 0.1 percent to 4,886.94 and the S&P 500 rose 7.27 points or 0.4 percent to 2,066.96.

The major European markets turned in a mixed performance on Thursday. While the German DAX Index slipped by 0.3 percent, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index and the French CAC 40 Index rose by 0.4 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively.

U.S. crude oil ended lower on Thursday, after Iran and the world powers reached a deal in broad general terms which will curtail Tehran's nuclear program for uranium enrichment.

Crude oil futures for May delivery, the most actively traded contract, dropped $0.95 or 1.9 percent to settle at $49.14 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Thursday.