TOKYO
(dpa-AFX) - The Japanese stock market is marginally lower on Tuesday amid choppy trades, following the mixed cues from Wall Street and the fall in crude oil prices. Investors also turned cautious ahead of the outcome of the Bank of Japan's two-day monetary policy meeting that will end later in the day.
The Bank of Japan will wrap up its monetary policy meeting and then announce its decision on interest rates. The BoJ is widely expected to keep its benchmark lending rate unchanged at -0.10 percent.
In late-morning trades, the benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is losing 31.69 points or 0.18 percent to 17,202.06, off a low of 17,186.23 earlier.
Among the major exporters, Sony is adding 0.2 percent and Canon is up 0.6 percent, while Sharp is down more than 1 percent.
The Nikkei business daily reported that Toshiba is in late-stage talks to sell its white goods business to Chinese household appliance giant Midea Group in a deal expected to be valued at tens of billions of yen. Shares of Toshiba are advancing almost 1 percent.
Automakers Toyota is declining 0.5 percent and Honda is edging down 0.09 percent. In the banking space, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial is losing more than 1 percent.
In the oil space, Inpex and refiner JX Holdings are down more than 1 percent each.
Among the other major gainers, Oki Electric Industry and Sumitomo Osaka Cement are rising more than 3 percent each, while Kobe Steel is rising almost 3 percent. On the flip side, JTEXT Corp. is losing 3 percent and Dai-ichi Life Insurance is down almost 3 percent.
On the economic front,
Japan
will see January numbers for tertiary industry, final January figures for industrial production and February data for
Tokyo
condominium sales.
In the currency market, the
U.S.
dollar traded in the upper 113 yen-level on Tuesday, up slightly from Monday's close in
Tokyo
.
On Wall Street, stocks closed mixed on Monday amid choppy trading as traders looked ahead to the
U.S.
Federal Reserve's monetary policy decision scheduled to be announced Wednesday afternoon. Profit taking contributed to the initial pullback by stocks, with traders cashing in on the gains seen over the past few weeks.
While the S&P 500 edged down by 2.55 points or 0.1 percent to 2,019.63, the Dow inched up 15.82 points or 0.1 percent to 17,229.13 and the Nasdaq crept up 1.81 points or less than a tenth of a percent to 4,750.28.
The major European markets moved to the upside on Monday. While the German DAX Index spiked by 1.6 percent, the
U.K.'s
FTSE 100 Index climbed by 0.6 percent percent and the French CAC 40 Index rose by 0.3 percent.
Crude oil prices were lower Monday, falling from yearly highs amid speculation that increased
Iran
output will offset a supply freeze by
Saudi Arabia
and
Russia
. WTI crude for April delivery tumbled $1.32 or 3.4 percent to settle at $37.18 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
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