A woman walks past an electronic board?displaying stock prices of the Nikkei 225 listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo on July 25, 2024. (Photo by Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP)
Tokyo, Japan — Tokyo’s key Nikkei index tumbled more than three percent on Thursday, marking seven straight losing sessions, after the tech-heavy Nasdaq index plunged on Wall Street.
A higher yen also weighed on the Tokyo market as the Japanese currency surged to levels unseen since early April.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 3.28 percent, or 1,285.34 points, to 37,869.51.
It was the biggest single-day point fall since June 2016 when British voters chose to leave the European Union.
READ: Markets track tech-led plunge on Wall St, yen extends gains
The broader Topix index shed 2.98 percent, or 83.26 points, to 2,709.86.
Hideyuki Suzuki, senior analyst at SBI Securities, told AFP that “falls in the US tech sector — especially a plunge in Tesla shares and disappointing Alphabet earnings — as well as a stronger yen weighed on the market”.
The Nikkei last marked seven straight daily losses in 2021, said IwaiCosmo Securities.
“Shares that had enjoyed sharp gains since the start of the year suffered sharp losses,” IwaiCosmo said.
The yen stood at 152.83 per dollar in late afternoon after touching 152.25 yen, a level not seen since early April.
Analyst Stephen Innes said the safe-haven Japanese currency is “basking in the glow of this week’s risk-off mood”.
“Momentum traders seem to have shifted from squaring short yen positions to taking long yen bets ahead of next week’s Bank of Japan meeting,” Innes said in a newsletter.
READ: Nissan shares plunge after profit warning
Market watchers are divided on whether Japan’s central bank will raise interest rates again on July 31 as they look to normalise their long-standing ultra-loose monetary policy.
On Wall Street, the tech-rich Nasdaq dived 3.6 percent, the blue-chip Dow fell 1.3 percent and the broad-based S&P 500 dropped 2.3 percent.
Among major shares in Tokyo, Nissan dropped 6.98 percent to 485 yen after the Japanese automaker issued a profit warning, with CEO Makoto Uchida calling first quarter results “very challenging”.
Toyota fell 2.58 percent to 3,020.
Semiconductor shares also fell sharply. Tokyo Electron gave up 4.82 percent to 29,010. Advantest lost 6.04 percent to 5,708.