Tokyo weakens, HK dips below 10,000


Nissan shares closed 2.8% higher Thursday. Company president Carlos Ghosn says Japan's No. 2 carmaker is on track to earn $2.75 billion in FY2001.

TOKYO, Japan -- Tokyo stocks dipped sharply lower Thursday, led down by weakness among key technology stocks taking their cue from the U.S.

Japanese automakers Nissan and Mazda were among a handful of leading chips to rise.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 average closed down 280.60 points or 2.61 percent to 10.474.85, while the broader capital-weighted TOPIX fell 19.12 points or 1.76 percent to 1,068.48.

Others markets in the region followed suit, with Hong Kong taking the biggest hit. Its Hang Seng index slipped below the 10,000 point level, losing 3.7 percent or 380 points to close at 9880.61.

In Seoul, tech weakness saw the Kospi drop 4.08 points or 0.77 percent to 524.21, with SK Telecom unchanged and Hyundai Merchant Marine a rare gainer.

Taiwan's Taiex was relatively unscathed by the regional downturn, losing just 5.93 points or 0.16 percent to 3811.2. TSMC, Yageo and Winbond rose among tech stocks, but UMC, Acer and Hon Hai Precision weakened.

Singapore down, KL and Jakarta up


Hong Kong registered the day's biggest falls, with its Hang Seng index losing 3.7%

Singapore's Straits Times index was down about 2 percent to 1412 in late trade.

Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta were the only Southeast Asian markets to rise.

Australia's S&P/ASX200 index was down 1.2 percent to 3199.6, with diversified miner WMC again gaining after confirming Wednesday it is talking to potential buyers, including Alcoa.

Market heavyweight News Corp eased 2 percent to A13.60, while most banks were down with the exception of the biggest, National Australia Bank.

In New Zealand, the Top 40 ended about 1 percent lower at 1901.67.

Tokyo's woes Thursday were directly linked to the U.S., where there were further anthrax scares and mixed sentiment from U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in his Congressional address.

Tokyo follows tech weakness in U.S.


Japanese tech stock weakness followed falls on the U.S. Nasdaq

The Nasdaq composite index market tumbled to end down 4.40 percent Wednesday, while the Dow Jones industrial average was off 1.6 percent to 9232.97.

The share price of chip giant Texas Instruments declined in after hours trading Wednesday.

Among Japanese tech stocks, Tokyo Electron, a maker of semiconductor-manufacturing equipment, lost 9.12 percent to 4980 yen and Advantest Corp, a top maker of chip-testing devices, fell 6 percent to 6480 yen.

"Given the recent close correlation between the Nasdaq and the Nikkei, some losses are unavoidable here," Masayoshi Okamoto, a trader at Jujiya Securities, told Reuters news agency.

"If Japan were hit with fresh cases of suspicious mail, that would put an additional burden on the market," Okamoto said.

Japanese chip makers NEC, Toshiba and Hitachi, which had led Tokyo's upward charge in recent trade, were hit hard after the Philadelphia Stock Exchange's semiconductor index dived 7.37 percent.

Consumer electronics giant Sony, which secures about 30 percent of its sales in the United States, fell 2.38 percent to 4,930 yen.

Banks easier, automakers make gains

Banking groups UFJ and MTFG, which were higher in early trade, eased later to close flat. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking lost 3.18 percent, while Mizuho Holdings gave up 0.7 percent.

In the auto sector, Mazda Motor Corp firmed 5.79 percent to 201 yen in a see-saw session.

Japan's fifth-largest automaker briefly surged to 219 yen after raising its group net forecast for the first half of 2001/02 to a 1.0 billion yen profit from a 9.50 billion yen loss.

Second-ranked Nissan Motor rose 2.8 percent to 589 yen. Nissan president Carlos Ghosn announced the company's revival plan was ahead of schedule and it would likely report operating profit of 187 billion yen ($1.56 billion) for the first half ending September 30.

Ghosn repeated the company's forecast group net profit of 330 billion yen for the full year to next March.

Mobile phone giant NTT DoCoMo was 2.34 percent lower at 1.67 million yen, while its parent NTT eased 3.24 percent to 508,000 yen.

The Nikkei is still 1.7 percent above its close of 10,292.95 on September 11, before the terror attacks in the U.S. stoked fears demand for Japanese products would chill.

Hideki Kamiya, senior fund manager at Asahi Tokyo Investment Trust Management, told Reuters news agency: "Given worries consumption will slow going forward, there's no convincing reason to keep pushing the market further above its pre-attack level."

Reuters contributed to this report.