The Japanese stock market slipped into negative territory on Thursday after opening higher following the mostly positive lead overnight from Wall Street after the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter point as widely expected.
In late-morning trades, the benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is losing 30.81 points or 0.14 percent to 22,727.26, after rising to a high of 22,786.61 earlier.
The major exporters are mostly lower. Sony is down 0.4 percent, Canon is losing 0.3 percent and Mitsubishi Electric is declining 0.2 percent, while Panasonic is rising more than 2 percent after the company and Toyota announced an agreement to commence a study to advance the development of automotive batteries.
Shares of Rakuten are losing more than 4 percent after the Nikkei business daily reported that the company plans to enter the mobile carrier industry that is already dominated by SoftBank, NTT Docomo and KDDI.
In the banking sector, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial are down more than 2 percent each. Among automakers, Toyota is adding 0.1 percent, while Honda is down 0.6 percent.
In the oil space, Inpex is declining 1 percent, while Japan Petroleum is up more than 1 percent.
Among the market's best performers, Comsys Holdings is rising more than 3 percent, Sumco Corp. is higher by more than 2 percent and Tokuyama Corp. is advancing almost 2 percent.
On the flip side, Casio Computer and Sompo Holdings are down almost 3 percent each.
In economic news, Japan will see final October figures for industrial production and preliminary December numbers for the Manufacturing PMI from Nikkei.
In the currency market, the U.S. dollar is trading in the upper 112 yen-range on Thursday.
On Wall Street, stocks traded modestly higher for most of Wednesday, although the S&P 500 faded after the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision. As expected, the Fed raised the benchmark U.S. interest rate to a range of 1.25 percent to 1.5 percent, but struck a dovish tone on future rate hikes amid stubbornly low inflation.
The Dow added 80.63 points or 0.33 percent to 24,585.43 and the Nasdaq gained 13.48 points or 0.20 percent to 6,875.80, while the S&P 500 eased 1.26 points or 0.05 percent to 2,662.85.
Most of the European markets ended Wednesday's session in the red. The DAX of Germany dropped 0.44 percent, the CAC 40 of France fell 0.51 percent and the FTSE 100 of the U.K. declined 0.05 percent.
Crude oil futures fell Wednesday after the dollar strengthened following the Fed's rate hike. WTI crude lost $0.54 or 1 percent to settle at $56.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
by RTT Staff Writer
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