Tokyo stocks opened lower Wednesday as profit-taking set in after five straight positive sessions, following a lacklustre lead from Wall Street .
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The dollar will await the U.S. May ADP private employment report due later in the day for potential relief, with the report often seen providing clues to the all-important non-farm payrolls data scheduled for release on Friday.
“The stock market’s reaction is changing and coming around to the idea that the USA economy is strong enough to withstand higher rates”, Yoshinori Ogawa, a market strategist at Okasan Securities, told Bloomberg News.
“Now is not the time to buy actively”.
Tokyo was scheduled to raise the sales tax from eight percent to 10 percent in April 2017.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 hiked 233.18 points, or 1.4%, to 17,068.02, as the yen weakened against the rising dollar and on media reports that a planned hike in the country’s consumption would be delayed.
Masahiko Komura, vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, told reporters on Monday of Abe’s decision.
SoftBank will reduce its 32.2 percent holding in the Chinese company to about 28 percent with the sale, and use the proceeds to pay down its debts, the company said in a statement.
Shares of home appliance and electronics exporter Panasonic Corp slipped 2.9 percent and tyre exporter Bridgestone Corp fell 2.6 percent.
Banking giant Mitsubishi UFJ tacked on 0.60 percent to close at 546.0 yen.
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Worries about whether Britain will vote to stay in the European Union or not later this month also buoyed the yen, although the Japanese currency did give back some its big gains against the dollar late Wednesday on the stronger-than-expected Institute for Supply Management (ISM) U.S. factory activity numbers.
