Friday, September 24, 2010

Nikkei set to track U.S. shares lower; eyes on yen

TOKYO: The Nikkei average is likely to fall on Friday, Sept 24 after a weak reading on the U.S. job market pushed down shares on Wall Street, with market players keeping an eye on the yen after Japan's intervention last week.

The benchmark Nikkei is likely to trade between 9,400 and 9,550, said Monex Inc market analyst Toshiyuki Kanayama, after falling 0.4 percent to 9,566.32 on Wednesday. Japan's stock market was closed on Thursday for a national holiday.

"The market will probably stay weak throughout the day," Kanayama said, due to the fall in U.S. shares and as the yen has edged higher against the dollar over the past couple of days.

The S&P 500 lost 0.8 percent on Thursday and broke below a key support level, after data showed U.S. jobless claims had risen unexpectedly in the latest week, a sign the labor market still faces headwinds.

The dollar stood at 84.51 yen, up 0.1 percent from late U.S. trading on Thursday. That was not far from Thursday's low of 84.26 yen on trading platform EBS, the dollar's lowest against the yen since Wednesday last week, the day of Japan's yen-selling intervention.

The Nikkei had hit a seven-week intraday high earlier this week, building on gains made since Japan intervened last week to weaken the yen in its first currency intervention in six years.

Japan sold an estimated 1.8 trillion yen on Sept. 15, a record for a single day, to help its exporters and to counter deflation, with Prime Minister Naoto Kan pointing to more potential yen selling. - Reuters


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