TOKYO: Tokyo stocks opened higher on Monday as automakers and other major exporting firms won support from a drop in the yen.
Investors are increasingly betting on a US interest rate hike this year as upbeat retail sales figures lift hopes for the economy and push up the dollar, which was trading above 104 yen in the morning.
A weaker yen inflates the profitability of Japan’s exporting firms and tends to buoy their shares.
“US retail sales figures turned out to be more solid than other previous consumer-related data,” said Shoji Hirakawa, chief global strategist at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute.
“We’ll see a strong start for Japanese shares” given that and the weaker yen, he told Bloomberg News.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index gained 0.15 percent, or 24.46 points, to sit at 16,880.83 in early trading while the Topix index of all first-section issues was up 0.09 percent, or 1.18 points, at 1,348.37.
Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power’s shares tumbled 7.89 percent to 385 yen on dimming hopes that reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, the world’s largest nuclear plant, will be restarted.
An anti-nuclear candidate won a local weekend election in the central Japan prefecture where the plant is located.
Most of Japan’s reactors remain offline following the 2011 accident at Fukushima.
Automakers were broadly higher with Toyota up 0.35 percent to 6,014 yen and Nissan up 0.16 percent at 995.6 yen.
