Japanese Market Notably Lower

(RTTNews) - The Japanese stock market is trading notably lower on Wednesday after opening in the green, reversing the gains in the previous two sessions, following the broadly negative cues from Wall Street overnight. The Nikkei 225 is falling below the 34,100 level, with weakness in technology and financial stocks.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is down 190.58 or 0.56 percent at 34,076.96, after hitting a low of 34,064.62 earlier. Japanese stocks ended significantly higher on Tuesday.

Market heavyweight SoftBank Group is losing more than 1 percent, while Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing is edging up 0.2 percent. Among automakers, Honda is edging up 0.5 percent and Toyota is also edging up 0.2 percent.

In the tech space, Advantest is losing more than 4 percent, Tokyo Electron is down almost 1 percent and Screen Holdings is declining almost 2 percent.

In the banking sector, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial is losing more than 1 percent, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial is declining almost 2 percent and Mizuho Financial is down almost 1 percent.

Among the major exporters, Canon and Mitsubishi Electric are losing almost 1 percent each, while Panasonic is declining more than 2 percent. Sony is edging up 0.2 percent.

Among other major losers, Disco is losing more than 4 percent, while Socionext, Toray Industries, Terumo, Isetan Mitsukoshi, Sumco, Nidec and Sumitomo Electric Industries are declining almost 3 percent each.

Conversely, Eisai is gaining almost 3 percent.

In the currency market, the U.S. dollar is trading in the higher 142 yen-range on Wednesday.

On the Wall Street, stocks continued to show a lack of direction over the course of the trading day on Tuesday after ending Monday's volatile session notably higher. The major averages bounced back and forth across the unchanged line before eventually closing modestly lower.

The Dow fell 155.83 points or 0.4 percent to 40,368.96, the S&P 500 dipped 9.34 points or 0.2 percent to 5,396.63 and the Nasdaq edged down 8.32 points or 0.1 percent to 16,823.17.

Meanwhile, the major European markets moved to the upside on the day. While the French CAC 40 Index climbed by 0.9 percent, the German DAX Index and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index both jumped by 1.4 percent.