Tokyo stocks close higher after US-North Korea summit

Tokyo: Tokyo stocks gained on Tuesday, extending rallies on Wall Street as investors largely welcomed a historic summit between the United States and North Korea.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index rose 0.33 per cent or 74.31 points to close at 22,878.35, while the broader Topix index was up 0.33 per cent or 5.98 points at 1,792.82. "The market largely welcomed the US-North Korea summit," said Hikaru Sato, senior technical analyst at Daiwa Securities.

"The fact that the summit took place without a breakdown can be regarded as a positive factor," Sato told AFP. "But we will have to keep an eye on the two countries for now as they have just begun the process."

US President Donald Trump said there had been a "lot of progress" in his talks with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, before the pair signed a document together.

The first-ever summit between sitting leaders of the two foes went "better than anybody could have expected", said Trump, who is scheduled to hold a news conference later in the day.

"Stocks this week will face a series of events... namely the US-North Korea summit and central bank meetings in Japan, the US and Europe," Masayuki Toshida, senior market analyst at Rakuten Securities, said in a commentary.

"In addition, worries over trade frictions caused by protectionist US economic policy still linger," he said. The direction of the market could change dramatically depending on developments in these events, he said.

In Tokyo, market heavyweight Fast Retailing, the operator of Uniqlo casual clothing, was up 1.13 percent at 50,840 yen. SoftBank gained 0.17 percent to 8,157 yen while Nintendo rose 0.16 per cent to 41,710 yen.

Panasonic rose 1.36 per cent to 1,597 yen but Sony fell 0.56 per cent to 5,478 yen with Toyota down 1.26 per cent at 7,397 yen.

Mitsubishi UFJ fell 0.20 per cent to 675.3 yen and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial was unchanged at 4,542 yen. The dollar fetched 110.28 yen in Asian afternoon trade, against 110.02 yen in New York late Monday.

Global equity markets rose Monday as traders brushed off a chaotic Group of Seven meeting to focus instead on the Trump-Kim summit. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up less than 0.1 per cent, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.2 per cent.