TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - The Japanese stock market is modestly lower on Wednesday in choppy trading despite the record highs overnight on Wall Street amid continued optimism about progress on coronavirus vaccines and an economic recovery.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is down 51.10 points or 0.19 percent to 26,736.44, after touching a high of 26,889.90 earlier. The Japanese market rose on Tuesday.
Market heavyweight SoftBank Group and Fast Retailing are declining more than 1 percent each. In the tech space, Advantest is adding 0.4 percent and Tokyo Electron is edging up 0.1 percent.
The major exporters are mostly higher on a slightly weaker yen. Canon is rising more than 2 percent, Panasonic is advancing more than 1 percent and Mitsubishi Electric is adding almost 1 percent, while Sony is declining 2 percent.
In the banking sector, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial is rising more than 1 percent and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial is up 0.2 percent. Among automakers, Honda is gaining more than 3 percent and Toyota is adding 0.6 percent.
Among the other major gainers, Fujikura is gaining almost 5 percent and Kubota Corp. is rising more than 4 percent. Yokohama Rubber and NSK are higher by more than 3 percent each.
Conversely, Nexon Co. and Toho Co. are losing almost 3 percent each, while Recruit Holdings, Chugai Pharmaceutical and Konami Holdings are lower by more than 2 percent each.
On the economic front, Japan will see November numbers for its consumer confidence index today.
In the currency market, the U.S. dollar is trading in the lower 104 yen-range on Wednesday.
On Wall Street, stocks closed higher on Tuesday following the release of upbeat Chinese manufacturing data. Continued optimism about a potential coronavirus vaccine also generated buying interest, with Pfizer and BioNTech applying to the European Medicines Agency for conditional marketing authorization of their vaccine. Meanwhile, traders largely shrugged off a report from the Institute for Supply Management showing a slowdown in the pace of growth in U.S. manufacturing activity.
The Dow climbed 185.28 points or 0.6 percent to 29,823.92, the Nasdaq surged up 156.37 points or 1.3 percent to 12,355.11 and the S&P 500 jumped 40.82 points or 1.1 percent at 3,662.45.
The major European markets also moved to the upside on Tuesday. While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index soared by 1.9 percent, the French CAC 40 Index surged up by 1.1 percent and the German DAX Index advanced by 0.7 percent.
Crude oil prices drifted lower and the most active crude futures contract dropped to a one-week closing low on Tuesday, weighed down by the decision of OPEC and its allies to delay a discussion on output cuts by a couple of days. WTI crude for January ended down by $0.79 or about 1.7 percent at $45.55 a barrel.
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