Tokyo stocks rise on weaker yen, stimulus report

Tokyo stocks rose Thursday morning, with exporters boosted by a weaker yen while a report said Japan’s government is planning a stimulus package twice as big as initially thought.

The package of at least 20 trillion yen ($186 billion) is aimed at helping the world’s number-three economy emerge from deflation and fend off negative effects from Britain’s decision to leave the EU, Kyodo news agency reported citing unnamed sources.

Tokyo picked up a strong lead from Wall Street where gains by Microsoft and other technology companies lifted the Dow and S&P 500 to fresh records on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the dollar rose to 107.23 yen from 106.87 in New York, with the weakening yen a plus for Japanese exporters’ profitability.

“The current situation is good for stocks,” Mitsushige Akino, a Tokyo-based executive officer at Ichiyoshi Asset Management, told Bloomberg News.

“With the yen back at 107 to the dollar, I expect Japanese stocks to do well. The US economy is good, and there’s hope for policy measures in Japan too.”

At the lunch break, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index was up 1.05 percent, or 175.49 points, to 16,857.38, while the broader Topix index of all first-section shares had gained 0.78 percent, or 10.34 points, to 1,341.09.

In share trading, McDonald’s Japan rose 5.26 percent to 3,700 yen on the firm’s announcement late Wednesday that it was collaborating with developers of the Pokemon Go game ahead of its rollout in Japan.

Legions of Pokemon fans were left disappointed Wednesday after a rumoured release of the franchise’s hugely popular smartphone game in Japan proved wrong.

The app has now been released in more than 30 countries, but Japan — where Nintendo started the mythical creature franchise 20 years ago — has been kept waiting with no official launch date.

Nintendo shares, which had more than doubled since the game’s launch this month, rose 3.63 percent to 28,775 yen by the break.