The Japanese shares retreated from an all-time high this week, despite expected gains in the consumer sector following real wage growth for April, said Timothy Pope, a market analyst for China Global Television Network (CGTN).
Tokyo stocks ended lower Friday, as weak technology shares tracking their U.S. counterparts overnight prompted investors to continue locking in recent gains.
The benchmark Nikkei stock index, the 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average, ended down 882.57 points, or 1.31 percent, from Thursday at 66,588.12, after briefly losing over 2 percent.
The broader Topix index, meanwhile, finished 2.76 points, or 0.07 percent, lower at 3,949.09.
The Nikkei was weighed down by the selling of heavyweight semiconductor and artificial intelligence-related issues, with some investors continuing to lock in gains after the benchmark closed at a record high earlier this week.
"In Japan the Nikkei 225 also retreated. It was a coming back of this week's all-time highs. Today it shed 1.3 percent. Although it is still up about a third of one percent for the week as a whole. Chip sector stocks like Tokyo Electron were a significant drag on the Nikkei today - it was down 6.6 percent. But today's losses still look like a blip compared to the 34 percent that the index has added since the start of this year. And the slide today also comes despite the news of pretty decent real wage growth in the Japanese economy for the month of April - 1.9 percent. Because that's already inflation-adjusted, it will be very good news for the consumer sector, but it was drowned out by the weighting that it has given to tech on the Nikkei. And index weighting like that really matters on days like today, too, because we saw the broader TOPIX Index pretty much flat, because it does not live or die on the sort of big tech share performances," said Pope.
Japanese shares retreat from all-time high despite wage growth: analyst
