Japanese Market Slightly Higher

(RTTNews) - The Japanese stock market is trading slightly higher on Monday, adding to the gains in the previous session. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 is staying above the 38,200 level, following the mixed cues from Wall Street cues on Friday, with gains in index heavyweights and financial stocks.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is up 14.48 or 0.04 percent at 38,243.59, after touching a high of 38,273.40 and a low of 37,969.58 earlier. Japanese shares ended modestly higher on Friday.

Market heavyweight SoftBank Group is gaining almost 3 percent, while Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing is edging down 0.2 percent. Among automakers, Honda is gaining 2.5 percent, while Toyota is losing almost 1 percent.

In the tech space, Screen Holdings is edging up 0.5 percent and Advantest is gaining more than 1 percent. Tokyo Electron is flat.

In the banking sector, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial are gaining more than 1 percent each, while Mizuho Financial is edging up 0.4 percent.

The major exporters are mixed. Canon is edging down 0.3 percent and Mitsubishi Electric is losing almost 1 percent, while Sony is gaining more than 2 percent and Panasonic is adding almost 1 percent.

Among other major gainers, Minebea Mitsumi is soaring more than 6 percent, Olympus is surging more than 5 percent, Shizuoka Financial is gaining more than 4 percent, NH Foods is adding almost 4 percent and KDDI is up more than 3 percent while Shiseido, Murata Manufacturing and Toto are advancing almost 3 percent each.

Conversely, Comsys Holdings is plummeting more than 8 percent, Secom is plunging more than 7 percent, Mitsui Fudosan is slipping almost 7 percent and Kubota is losing more than 5 percent, while Mitsubishi Estate, OKUMA and Mazda Motor are sliding almost 5 percent each. Daiwa House Industry is declining more than 4 percent, while Hitachi Zosen, Dowa Holdings and Haseko are down almost 4 percent each. Tokyo Tatemono, Yamaha, Taisei and Alps Alpine are losing more than 3 percent each.

In economic news, The M2 money stock in Japan was up 2.2 percent on year in April, the Bank of Japan said on Monday - coming in at 1,260.1 trillion yen. That was shy of expectations for an increase of 2.5 percent, which would have been unchanged from the March reading.

The M3 money stock rose an annual 1.6 percent to 1,612.8 trillion yen, slowing from 1.8 percent in the previous month. The L money stock was up 1.8 percent on year at 2,144.4 trillion yen, slowing from 2.2 percent a month earlier.

In the currency market, the U.S. dollar is trading in the higher 155 yen-range on Monday.

On Wall Street, stocks moved to the upside early in the session on Friday but showed a lack of direction over the remainder of the trading day. The major averages eventually ended the day mixed, although the Dow closed higher for the eighth consecutive session.

While the tech-heavy Nasdaq edged down 5.40 points or less than a tenth of a percent to 16,340.87, the S&P 500 crept up 8.60 points or 0.2 percent to 5,222.68 and the Dow rose 125.08 points or 0.3 percent to a new one-month closing high of 39,512.84.

Meanwhile, the major European markets also moved to the upside on the day. While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index advanced by 0.6 percent, the German DAX Index and the French CAC 40 Index climbed by 0.5 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively.