Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Monetary policy jitters send Tokyo markets lower

by Brian Turner

Tokyo equities markets were down again on Wednesday as uncertainty continued ahead of an announcement due Thursday from the Bank of Japan on whether or not it will tighten monetary policy. Analysts believe that policy will be tightened, but are divided on whether the process will begin immediately or not until April.

The Nikkei 225 dropped 0.6 percent to 15,627.49, while the Topix index was down 0.8 percent to 1,605.58.

Banking dropped 1 percent as a whole, with Mitsubishi UFJ losing 1.2 percent to ¥1,650,000.

Reverberations from the news that mobile phone company Vodafone will sell its Japanese business to Softbank continued, with Softbank losing 2.5 percent to ¥3,060. Elsewhere among telecoms, NTT DoCoMo lost 1.8 percent to ¥167,000, but KDDI gained 2.1 percent to ¥575,000.

In the oil sector, upstream companies were lower on falling crude oil prices. Teikoku Oil lost 4.5 percent to ¥1,495, while Inpex lost the same percentage to ¥1,050,000.

Real estate was up on the day, however, after Goldman Sachs forecast that a strong land price survey in late March will send share prices up. Mitsui Fudosan gained 2.7 percent to ¥2,475, while Mitsubishi Estate was up 2.5 percent to ¥2,475 and Sumitomo Realty & Development advanced by 3.1 percent to ¥2,700.

 

 

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