Steel and non-ferrous metal stocks were among the major decliners

Tag : Non-ferrous Metal
Investors appeared to look past overnight gains on Wall Streetwhere declines in oil prices soothed investor worries about theimpact of inflation on the U.S. economy.
'Although the external environment has improved due to the weak yenand falling oil prices, the market appeared to have largely pricedin those positive factors, with investors finding few cues to buyup stocks at the current stage,' said Mitsushige Akino, chief fundmanager at Ichiyoshi Management.
Light, sweet crude shed 75 cents to settle at $114.45 a barrel inNew York trading after falling as low as $112.72, oil's lowestlevel since early May.
The dollar was last quoted at 110.15 yen, up from 109.83-85 yenlevels late Monday.
The Nikkei 225 Stock Average finished the morning session down95.04 points or 0.7 percent at 13,335.87, off a high of 13,397.87.
The broader Topix shed 2.34 points or 0.2 percent to 1,277.66.
Decliners outnumbered gainers 1,111 to 456, with 127 issuesunchanged.
Volume rose to 964 million shares from 851 million shares on Mondaymorning.
Overnight, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 48.03 points or0.4 percent to 11,782.35.
On the Tokyo bourse, steel and non-ferrous metal stocks were amongthe major decliners.
Sumitomo Metal Industries fell 3.2 percent to 460 yen, Nippon Steel (other-otc: NISTF.PK - news - people ) lost 3.7 percent to 521 yen and Sumitomo Metal Mining dropped3.5 percent to 1,284 yen.
Financial stocks were broadly higher as investors covered shortpositions. Mizuho Financial Group (nyse: MFG - news - people ) rose 2.1 percent to 488,000 yen, general leasing firm Orixclimbed 1.3 percent to 14,570 yen and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurancerallied 5.5 percent to 3,440 yen.
Shares in Tokyu Land Corp were up 0.8 percent at 528 yen on areport the property developer might be investing as much as 500billion yen ($4.5 billion) through the year to March 2011 in urbanrenewal projects.
NEC Corp (nasdaq: NIPNY - news - people ) turned 0.4 percent higher to 512 yen after a report said theelectronics giant is considering raising the domestic prices ofsome of its personal computer models slated for release this fall,marking the first price hike in six years.
($1=110.15 yen)








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