Japanese market pares early gains

Tokyo shares opened higher Friday, tracking Wall Street's gains overnight and strong Japanese GDP data. But the market soon pared gains and traded in traded briefly in negative territory, before moving into positive terrain again.

At 10:28 a.m. local time, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index was up 18.81 points at 14,270.55 and the broader Topix index of all First Section issues on the Tokyo Exchange was adding 3.15 points to 1,396.02. In early Tokyo deals, the dollar was trading in mid 104-yen levels. At 10:08 a.m. local time, the dollar was quoted at 104.65-104.68 yen, down 0.15 yen from Thursday's 5:00 p.m. quotes of 104.80-104.83 yen. Before the market opened today, the Cabinet Office said that Japan's economy grew an annualized 3.3% in real terms in the first quarter, marking the third successive quarterly expansion, aided by robust exports and a recovery in housing starts. Industrial production, consumer confidence and machine tool orders data are also scheduled for release later in the day. Banks were higher, with Mizuho Financial Group surging 3.94%, despite the banking group reporting a 49.8% drop in net profit for the year to March 2008 due to subprime-related losses. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial rose 2.59%, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group advanced 2.31% and Sumitomo Trust & Banking gained 2.04%. Among tech stocks, Sony declined 1.14%, following Thursday's 8.7% surge. Among other technology stocks, Fanuc added 0.45%, Fujitsu rose 2.95%, Kyocera advanced 0.69%, Advantest gained 1.58%, Tokyo Electron moved up 0.88% and Matsushita Electrical Industrial climbed 2.14%. NEC fell 4.36%. In the oil space, Inpex Holdings surged 3.05% and Nippon Mining Holdings jumped 2.27%, while Nippon Oil slipped 0.13% and Showa Shell lost 1.03%. Crude for June delivery held stady on Thursday in U.S. trading. Steel and shipping issues also gained, with Nippon Steel jumping 2.65% and Nippon Yusen rising 2.68%. Among auto issues, Toyota Motor added 0.74%, Mazda Motor advanced 0.42% and Honda Motor rose 2.34%. Suzuki Motor lost 0.93% and Nissan Motor fell 0.71%. Copyright(c) 2008 RealTimeTraders.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved