Foreigners Stay Net Buyers of Japan Stocks for 9th Week

Tokyo, July 12 (Jiji Press)–Foreign investors last week stayed net buyers of Japanese stocks for the ninth consecutive week on the back of the global equity market strength, a Tokyo Stock Exchange report showed Thursday.

Nonresidents posted net buying of 476,798 million yen, up from the previous week’s net purchases of 30,952 million yen, according to the TSE data based on stock transactions via 63 brokerage houses on the first and second sections of the TSE, the Osaka Securities Exchange and the Nagoya Stock Exchange.

“Healthy gains on the global equity market allowed foreign investors to step up buying in Japanese stocks,” said Yuya Yamaguchi, equity manager at Daiwa Securities SMBC Co.

Yamaguchi also pointed out that Tokyo players are highly jittery about foreigners’ moves, fearing that foreigners may unload Japanese stocks on the prospect of a major defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling camp in the upcoming House of Councillors election.

Last week, the 225-issue Nikkei average inched up a mere 2.58 points to finish Friday at 18,140.94.

Japanese firms’ sound earnings outlooks drove the market higher till last Thursday, but major stock indexes gave up most of their early gains on profit-taking on Friday amid a lack of fresh incentives.

The TSE report showed that individual investors turned net sellers of Japanese stocks, taking profits on the market’s rally early in the week, Yamaguchi said. They posted net selling of 279,342 million yen, compared with the preceding week’s buying excess of 27,743 million yen.

The average daily turnover on the TSE’s first section dropped to 2,374.1 billion yen last week from 2,540.8 billion yen in the preceding week.END

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