Japan’s Nikkei climbed more than one percent at one stage, boosted after investors unloaded superlong Japanese debt to buy stocks.
However, investors remained nervous ahead of US gross domestic product data released later in the day.
“Basically, we had a situation where bonds were overbought and stocks were oversold”, said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management, “Now investors are taking profits on bonds, and that money’s flowing into shares”.
“There’s also the hope that there could be some kind of policy emerging later today to deal with the strong yen, and even though nobody expects much from it, this is helping to boost the Nikkei, too”.
It was reported by Kyodo news agency that Kan would hold a news conference on Friday on step the government would take to cope with the recent yen surge.
Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda stressed the government would take appropriate action on currencies if and when required.
“More than anything in Japan, the most important things for the market’s direction next week are the U.S. GDP figures”, said Masayoshi Okamoto, head of dealing at Jujiya Securities, “and especially how U.S. stocks respond”.
“Even bad data might not be a problem”, he added, “what’s important is what the stocks do”.
The benchmark Nikkei moved further away from a 16-month low hit earlier this week, climbing one percent or 85.58 points to 8,991.06 in moderate trade.
It finished the week two percent down, its third successive negative week and the worst such run since April.
