Tokyo investors eye Japanese corporate earnings

Investors will be eyeing Japanese corporate earnings and fresh US data when trading resumes this week at Tokyo’s share markets after two days of public holidays. The Tokyo market will have to play catch-up with a barrage of key US figures, including retail sales, housing figures and industrial production data, after the all-important jobs numbers released last weekend. Tokyo markets are closed on Monday and on Tuesday for national holidays, with normal trading resuming on Wednesday. Major Japanese firms, including Nintendo and Toyota, will announce their fiscal year earnings, with investors expecting generally solid profits as companies benefited from a weak yen and a pickup in the economy. “The market is focusing on the corporate outlook for the year to March 2015, including how firms are viewing the impact of a consumption tax hike,” Nomura Securities said in a note to clients. Japan hiked its sales tax to 8.0% from 5.0% on April 1, a move seen as key to cutting its huge national debt but one that has aggravated fears about a downturn in consumer spending and the wider economy. On Friday, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index slipped 0.19% as profit-taking set in while investors waited for the US jobs report later in the day. Investors wanted to see if the report confirmed expectations that the world’s biggest economy was rebounding after a near-stall in the first quarter. The Nikkei lost 27.62 points to finish at 14,457.51, but rose 0.19% over the week. The headline index is down about 11% since the start of the year. The broader Topix index of all first-section shares was flat, inching up 0.02%, or 0.28 points to 1,182.48. It rose 1.07% over the week, according to a news agency.