The Japanese stock market made significant strides following the holidays, with the Nikkei 225 index seeing an almost 900 point increase, pushing past the 37,700 mark for the first time in 34 years. This surge was led by a majority of sectors, including influential companies, exporters and tech shares, ignoring the muddled signals emanating from Wall Street.
The principal Nikkei 225 Index swelled by 858.32 points, a 2.33% increase, landing at 37,755.74, following an earlier peak of 37,760.08. This comes after already impressive results at the end of the trading day on Monday in anticipation of Tuesday's holiday.
Market titan SoftBank Group saw significant growth of over 7%, while clothing retailer Fast Retailing witnessed a smaller 0.2% increase. As for automobile manufacturers, Honda had a minute drawdown of 0.2%, while Toyota experienced growth of over 2%.
In the technological sphere, Advantest rose by nearly 1%, Screen Holdings increased by nearly 3% and Tokyo Electron surged up by more than 10%.
As for the banking industry, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group saw a positive change of more than 1%. Alongside this, both Mitsubishi UFJ Financial and Mizuho Financial followed suit, with each experiencing growth of 1.5%.
Major exporters such as Panasonic and Canon also saw respective increases of over 2% and almost 2%. Similarly, Mitsubishi Electric and Sony had advances of nearly 3% and over 3%.
Among other significant gainers were MS&AD Insurance Group which saw a massive 11% increase, followed closely by Tokio Marine and Dai Nippon Printing, each with an almost 10% rise. IHI and Recruit Holdings gained over 8%, whereas Dowa Holdings increased by almost 8%. Other stocks that experienced notable growth were Sompo Holdings (over 7%), Fujikura (almost 7%), Subaru (almost 6%) and T&D Holdings (almost 5%). Furthermore, Sharp, Yamaha and Kawasaki Heavy Industries rose by roughly 4%.
Despite the overall positive performance, JGC Holdings took a severe hit, plummeting by almost 19%, while Nippon Paper Industries declined by 14%. Mazda Motor, Otsuka Holdings and DeNA also had significant slashes of over 8%, near 7% and over 6%, respectively. Sumitomo Realty & Development saw a 4% dip, and a similar trend was observed with Olympus and Kobe Steel. Mitsubishi Materials, Oji Holdings and Sumco all saw respective decreases of over 3%.
In the currency exchange market, the US dollar was traded in the lower 149 yen range on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Wall Street saw somewhat chaotic trading, with the central averages vacillating before closing with minimal changes, and potential new records for the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 fell short by some distance.
European markets also saw positive movements. The German DAX Index and French CAC 40 Index climbed by 0.7% and 0.6% respectively, whereas the UK's FTSE 100 closed just above the neutral level.
Lastly, crude oil futures remained largely unchanged due to demand concerns offsetting perceived supply disruptions. Additionally, the dollar's rebound adversely impacted prices. Consequently, West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for March modestly rose by $0.08, closing at $76.92 a barrel.
