Tokyo stocks end higher despite N. Korea rocket launch

TOKYO: Tokyo stocks closed higher yesterday with investors keeping their cool despite North Korea’s launch of a second missile over Japan in less than a month.

Japan was jolted awake in the early hours by an alert saying North Korea had fired a rocket over its northern island of Hokkaido.

It followed a similar launch in late August and a nuclear test earlier this month.

But the latest provocation by Pyongyang sparked no sell-off on Japanese market.

Market players “are getting used to the risks”, said Toshihiko Matsuno, chief strategist at SMBC Friend Securities.

“The missile took a similar path to the previous one, which means the situation has not drastically changed,” he told AFP.

“If it had fallen on Japanese territory, it would have been a totally different story.”

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was up 0.52 per cent, or 102.06 points, to close at 19,909.50. It gained 3.29 per cent over the week.

The Topix was up 0.42 per cent, or 6.81 points, at 1,638.94. It rose 2.85 per cent over the week.

Next week, investors will be eyeing speeches by BoJ chief Haruhiko Kuroda and US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen.

The dollar plunged right after the missile news as the Japanese currency drew safe-haven buying. But the greenback bounced back quickly on expectations for higher US interest rates.

“Solid US consumer inflation has fuelled expectations for another interest rate hike, supporting the dollar,” Matsuno said.

A weak yen is positive for Japanese exporters and often buoys the Tokyo markets.

The dollar was trading at 110.43 yen on Friday after tumbling to 109.56 yen briefly from 110.26 yen late in New York.

“Geopolitical risks won’t go away anytime soon,” said Masaaki Yamaguchi, an equity market strategist at Nomura Holdings.

“Yet market participants have learned from the past events, so possible reactions to a missile launch may get smaller,” he told Bloomberg News.

In trading in individual stocks, Nintendo climbed 1.53 per cent to 38,250 yen while Toyota rose 0.76 per cent to 6,480 yen.

ANA was down 0.11 per cent at 419.8 yen and Japan Airlines edged up 0.40 per cent at 3,761 yen. — AFP

A shopkeeper watches a television broadcasting a news report on North Korea firing a missile that flew over Japan’s northern Hokkaido far out into the Pacific Ocean, at his supermarket near the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas in Paju,...