Tokyo, December 15 (QNA) - The Japanese Nikkei index dropped over one percent on Monday, influenced by a drop in technology shares that followed their counterparts on Wall Street amid ongoing concerns that there may be overvaluation.
The Nikkei fell 1.3 percent to end the day at 50,168.11 points. In contrast, the broader Topix index, which does not have as heavy a weighting of technology stocks, rose 0.2 percent to 3,431.47 points.
Among the 225 stocks on the Nikkei index, the number of advancing stocks was 130, and the number of declining stocks was 94, while one stock finished unchanged.
Shares of SoftBank Group plunged six percent and shares of Advantest fell 6.4 percent, together accounting for about 560 points of the total Nikkei decline of 668 points. The share of Fujikura, a company linked to artificial intelligence, fell 4.4 percent.
The railway sector rose 2.1 percent, making it the best-performing sector among the 33 sectors on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The services and retail sectors each rose by more than 1.7 percent.
The banking sector jumped two percent ahead of the expected interest rate increase on Friday. (QNA)