Monday, October 23, 2006

Nikkei closes 0.8 percent higher

by Brian Turner

The real estate sector helped Tokyo equities markets to gains on Monday, with the Nikkei 225 closing at 16,788.82, up 0.8 percent, and the Topix index adding 0.9 percent to 1,659.39. Elsewhere, the Mothers index of small and mid-cap stocks gained 2.6 percent to 1,239.76.

The banking sector was up as well, advancing 1.6 percent as a whole, benefiting from the fact that as the earnings season begins banks are nearly the last sector to report. Mitsubishi UFJ was 1.3 percent higher to ¥1,510,000.

Real estate, besides still taking advantage of signs that property prices in Japan are continuing to climb, were helped when Goldman Sachs raised the target share prices of the three largest companies in the sector last week. Mitsubishi Estate added 3 percent on the session to ¥2,955, while Mitsu Fudosan gained 3.3 percent to ¥3,020 and Sumitomo Realty & Development was 4.2 percent higher to ¥3,990.

The telecommunications sector was mixed. KDDI dropped 0.9 percent to ¥784,000. On the other hand, NTT DoCoMo added 0.5 percent to ¥188,000 and Softbank was up 3.5 percent to ¥2,685 ahead of an announcement concerning its mobile phone unit.

Construction machinery manufacturer Komatsu was 4.3 percent lower to ¥2,120 after a disappointing quarterly report from Caterpillar in the United States.

 

 

 

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