TOKYO: Tokyo stocks fell early Thursday as the yen’s relative strength weighed on exporters while doubts over the prospects for US President Donald Trump’s broader agenda clouded sentiment.
The decline came a day after Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei index suffered its biggest one-day fall since Trump’s November election victory.
Bourses in Europe also dropped, including in London, where parliament was put on lockdown after an attacker killed four people before being shot dead.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index opened flat and fell 0.22 percent, or 41.39 points, to 18,999.99 in early trading. The Topix index of all first-section issues was down 0.33 percent, or 5.00 points, at 1,525.20.
US stocks have been volatile on doubts about Trump’s ability to win a vote in the House of Representatives later Thursday on a healthcare replacement bill.
Failure could delay or doom the president’s growth-friendly policies like tax cuts and deregulation favoured by Wall Street.
“Markets will be focused on the passage of the US healthcare reform bill,” Tapas Strickland, an economist at National Australia Bank, wrote in a note.
In the forex market, the dollar stood at 111.35 yen, compared with 111.13 yen in New York and 111.57 yen in Tokyo on late Wednesday.
But the greenback remained well off the mid-113 yen levels enjoyed at the end of last week.
The yen becomes attractive as a safe bet in times of uncertainty or turmoil, but its strength hurts the profitability of Japanese exporters, thus hitting demand for their shares.
Toyota lost 0.63 percent at 6,122 yen, while Honda edged up 0.32 percent at 3,424 yen.
