Japanese shares track Wall Street gains; tech shares shine

TOKYO — Japanese shares rose on Friday for the first time in six sessions, with heavyweight technology stocks leading the charge, as the market tracked a sharp rebound on Wall Street overnight.

By 0148 GMT, the Nikkei share average was up 1.5% at 26,346.52, but was set to lose 2.9% for the week. The broader Topix rose 0.69% to 1,869.19 and was on course to post a 2.8% weekly loss.

On Wall Street, U.S. stocks ended sharply higher, led by a 3% gain in the Nasdaq, marking a dramatic market reversal as U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled harsh new sanctions against Russia after Moscow began an all-out invasion of Ukraine.

“Japanese market made a big reversal from sharp losses in a short period of time,” Seiichi Suzuki, chief equity market analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute said, adding that the rebound, however, seems to be a little too strong given declines in the Nasdaq futures.

Chip-related stocks Tokyo Electron and Advantest led the Nikkei’s gains, jumping 4.06% and 6.19%, respectively. Technology start-up investor SoftBank Group climbed 4.98% and medical platform services firm M3 rose 4.5%.

Oil explorers sub-index, down 5.4%, was the worst performing sector among the 33 industry subindexes of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with Inpex losing 5.61%.

Banks and insurers also fell 2.21% and 3.27%. There were 134 advancers on the Nikkei index against 85 decliners.

The volume of shares traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s main board was 0.59 billion, compared to the average of 1.28 billion in the past 30 days. (Reporting by Junko Fujita; editing by Uttaresh.V)