Japanese Market Notably Lower

Snapping the four-session winning streak, the Japanese stock market is notably lower on Thursday, despite the broadly positive cues from global markets overnight. The Nikkei 225 is falling to a tad above the 33,500 level, with losses across most sectors led by technology stocks as some traders booked profits after the recent winning streak.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is down 171.19 points or 0.51 percent to 33,510.05, after hitting a low of 33,411.24 earlier. Japanese stocks closed significantly higher on Wednesday.

Market heavyweight SoftBank Group is edging down 0.1 percent and Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing is losing more than 1 percent. Among automakers, Toyota is edging down 0.5 percent and Honda is edging down 0.3 percent.

In the tech space, Advantest is losing almost 2 percent, Tokyo Electron is down almost 1 percent and Screen Holdings is edging down 0.2 percent.

In the banking sector, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial are edging down 0.1 to 0.3 percent each, while Mizuho Financial is edging up 0.5 percent.

Among the major exporters, Canon is losing almost 1 percent and Mitsubishi Electric is down more than 1 percent, while Panasonic is gaining almost 1 percent. Sony is flat.

Among other major losers, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha and Trend Micro are losing almost 4 percent each, while Nippon Yusen K.K.is declining more than 3 percent and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines is down almost 3 percent.

Conversely, DIC is surging more than 6 percent.

In economic news, the value of retail sales in Japan was up 5.3 percent in November, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry or METI said on Thursday – coming in at 13.819 trillion yen. That was up from the 4.1 percent increase in October. On a seasonally adjusted monthly basis, retail sales rose 1.0 percent after slipping 1.7 percent in the previous month.

The METI also said industrial production in Japan was down a seasonally adjusted 0.9 percent on month in November. That beat expectations for a decline of 1.6…