Soft Start Expected For Japan Stock Market

(RTTNews) - The Japanese stock market on Friday snapped the four-day winning streak in which it had rallied more than 750 points or 1.9 percent. The Nikkei 225 now sits just above the 39,470-point plateau and it may tick lower again on Monday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets suggests little movement ahead of the FOMC meeting later this week. The European and U.S. markets mostly saw slight weakness and the Asian markets figure to follow that lead.

The Nikkei 225 finished modestly lower on Friday following losses from the financial shares and technology stocks, while the automobile companies were mixed.

For the day, the index stumbled 378.66 points or 0.95 percent to finish at 39,470.44 after trading between 39,247.41 and 39,734.99.

Among the actives, Nissan Motor fell 0.36 percent, while Mazda Motor added 0.56 percent, Toyota Motor sank 0.77 percent, Honda Motor shed 0.50 percent, Softbank Group eased 0.16 percent, Mizuho Financial dropped 0.78 percent, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial skidded 1.05 percent, Mitsubishi Electric tanked 2.39 percent, Sony Group plunged 3.00 percent, Panasonic Holdings dipped 0.13 percent , Hitachi slumped 1.50 percent and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial was unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street suggests mild downside as the major averages opened higher on Friday but quickly slipped under water and largely stayed that way, although the NASDAQ broke back into positive territory later in the day.

The Dow shed 86.04 points or 0.20 percent to finish at 43,828.06, while the NASDAQ rose 23.92 points or 0.12 percent to close at 19,926.72 and the S&P 500 eased 0.16 points or 0.00 percent to end at 6,051.09.

For the week, the NASDAQ rose 0.3 percent, the S&P 500 slid 0.6 percent and the narrower Dow tumbled 1.8 percent.

The early strength on Wall Street partly reflected a positive reaction to earnings news from Broadcom (AVGO), which reported better than expected fiscal fourth quarter earnings and said it expects continued strong demand for its custom AI chips.

Buying interest waned shortly after the start of trading, however, as traders looked ahead to this week's Federal Reserve meeting. The Fed is widely expected to lower interest rates by another 25 basis points, although traders are likely to pay close attention to the accompanying statement for clues about future rate cuts.

Oil futures settled higher on Friday as supply worries resurfaced following additional sanctions on Iran and Russia. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for January closed up $1.27 or about 1.8 percent at $71.29 a barrel.

Closer to home, Japan will see October figures for core machine orders later this morning; in September, core machine orders were down 0.7 percent on month and 4.8 percent on year. Japan also will see preliminary December results for the services and manufacturing PMIs from Jibun Bank; in November, their scores were 50.5 and 49.0, respectively.