"Asian Stocks" Nikkei fell 200 points in the half-day, semiconductor equipment stocks are weak, trading companies and resource stocks perform well against the trend

The Japanese yen rose slightly by nearly 0.1% during the Asian session, with the USD/JPY falling to 156.35. The Nikkei index opened lower by 59 points this morning (29th), with the initial decline expanding to 402 points, hitting a low of 50,347 points before narrowing the loss, closing down 200 points or nearly 0.4% at 50,550 points.

Trading companies' stocks performed well against the market trend, with Itochu Corporation (8001.JP) rising 4.3%, making it the best-performing index stock. Sumitomo Corporation (8053.JP) rose 1.8%, while Marubeni Corporation (8002.JP) and Mitsubishi Corporation (8058.JP) increased by 0.6% to 0.9%.

Resource stocks were in demand, with Sojitz Corporation (5714.JP), Sumitomo Metal Mining (5713.JP), and Mitsubishi Materials (5711.JP) rising between 2.4% and 3.3%.

Semiconductor equipment stocks were soft, with Lasertec (6920.JP) and NVIDIA supplier Advantest (6857.JP) each falling by about 2.1%, and Disco (6146.JP) dropping 2.5%.

Blue-chip stocks showed mixed developments, with SoftBank (9984.JP) rising 1.4% and Fast Retailing falling 0.9%. In the automotive sector, Nissan (7201.JP) rose 1.2%, while Toyota (7203.JP) slightly declined by 0.2%. In the wire sector, Fujikura (5803.JP) rose 3.4%