Japanese Market Sharply Lower

(RTTNews) - Extending the losses in the previous three sessions, the Japanese stock market pared early gains to trade significantly lower on Tuesday, with the Nikkei 225 falling below the 30,600 level, following the mixed cues from Wall Street overnight, with weakness across most sectors led by exporters and financial stocks.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is down 389.54 points or 1.26 percent at 30,610.01, after hitting a low of 30,551.67 and a high of 31,210.26 earlier. Japanese shares ended significantly lower on Monday.

Market heavyweight SoftBank Group is gaining almost 1 percent and Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing is also up almost 1 percent. Among automakers, Honda is losing almost 2 percent and Toyota is declining more than 2 percent.

In the tech space, Advantest is gaining almost 1 percent, while Screen Holdings is edging down 0.3 percent and Tokyo Electron is losing almost 1 percent.

In the banking sector, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial is losing almost 2 percent, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial is slipping more than 2 percent and Mizuho Financial is declining almost 3 percent.

The major exporters are mostly lower. Canon is losing 2.5 percent, Panasonic is down more than 1 percent, Mitsubishi Electric is declining more than 2 percent and Sony is slipping almost 1 percent.

Among the other major losers, Nidec is plunging almost 10 percent, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha is slipping almost 6 percent and Sumitomo Pharma is losing more than 4 percent, while , while Nippon Yusen K.K., Chugai Pharmaceutical and Nippon Paper Industries are down almost 4 percent each. JGC Holdings, Resona Holdings, IHI, Fujikura, NTN, Chiba Bank, Kyowa Kirin and Sumitomo Electric Industries are declining more than 3 percent each. Kobe Steel is down almost 3 percent.

Conversely, there are no other major gainers.

In the currency market, the U.S. dollar is trading in the higher 149 yen-range on Tuesday.

On Wall Street, stocks recovered from an initial move to the downside but gave back ground in the latter part of the trading session on Monday. The major averages eventually ended the day mixed, with the Dow and the S&P 500 falling to their lowest closing levels in over four months.

While the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 34.52 points or 0.3 percent to 13,018.33, bouncing off a nearly five-month intraday low, the S&P 500 dipped 7.12 points or 0.2 percent to 4,217.04 and the Dow fell 190.87 points or 0.6 percent to 32,936.41.

The major European markets also turned in a mixed performance on the day. While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index fell 0.4 percent, the German DAX Index closed just above the unchanged line and the French CAC 40 Index climbed by 0.5 percent.

Crude oil prices fell sharply on Monday amid easing concerns about oil supply on hopes the diplomatic efforts in the Middle East will help prevent the conflict there from escalating into a bigger regional war. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for November settled at $85.49, down $2.59 or about 2.94 percent.